Failure is Not an Option
by aadarshinah
Summary: It's 2028, nearly 56 years since man last walked on the moon. There are those who think that's been far too long. This is the story of seven of them and how McCoy got caught up in their unbelievable journey to the stars. AU. Eventual Jim/Bones.
1. we just decided to go

**Failure Is Not An Option**  
_A ____Star Trek: 2009_ Modern Day AU

* * *

"_It's not a miracle. We just decided to go. Apollo 8 - we were so close.  
Just sixty nautical miles down and... Mmm. It was like just step ____out, and walk on the face of it."__  
_Jim Lovell in ___Apollo 13_

* * *

The night after Leonard McCoy signed his divorce papers, his raggedy old Chevy – the only thing he'd gotten in the divorce – broke down just outside of St. Louis. Lacking the funds or the inclination to track down someone to fix it, he left the thing where it was and, pausing only to grab his duffel, walked to the nearest bar.

He stayed there for five nights, slowly drinking his way through his meagre funds.

On the sixth, the owner offered him a job.

Twelve days after that he met Christopher Pike, the retired Air Force colonel who would change his life.

**

* * *

**

Saturday, 4 November, 2028

It was the typical early Saturday crowd and The White Rabbit was slow. Not enough for Leo to be bored, not really, but enough for him to not be paying attention to the patrons in the back booths, mostly hidden behind the blue haze of cigarette smoke that lingered in the place even when empty. He'd just finished pulling a handful of pints for some greying men at the far end of the bar when he saw a pair of whiskeys slam down next to him.

"What did he say was wrong with them, Charlene?" he asked without looking up, ducking under the bar for more limes. He liked Charlene, who was one of the youngest of the waitresses, though she'd been at The White Rabbit the longest. She was straight forward and to the point and, most importantly, had talked her boss into hiring him in the first place. He'd discovered that any question, great or small, would invariably lead to a listing of the indignities she'd been made to suffer at the hands of her customers (largely exaggerated, thank God), shortly followed by a critique of their alcohol preferences, hygiene, and ancestry. But she was a good girl.

He was somewhat startled when a man's voice answered him instead. "Nothing's wrong with them. Just felt like you could use a drink too, Dr. McCoy. Certainly looks like it."

Leo bristled. In the nearly three weeks he'd been at The White Rabbit, no one had realized – or, at least, mentioned in his hearing – that it was his face plastered on the news, claiming his culpability in the death of Senator Richardson's son and heir. It was that kind of place. There were times when Leo would've been surprised some of the patrons could even read.

Still, looking up from the lime's he's been slicing (trying not to think that he'd done his surgical residency at Johns Hopkins for _this_), he stared at his accuser.

The man had the self-assured posturing of old money, the kind Leo had become familiar with in dealing with his rich patients (back when he still had patients of any kinds), but with an air of ability and intellect that suggested he was a self-made man. He was tallish, with a mess of black hair starting to grey at the temples and a suit that easily cost five thousand dollars if it cost a dime. It belonged in The White Rabbit even less than Leo did.

It screamed lawyer.

Leo _hated_ lawyers. Passionately.

"If you're another one of Senator Robertson's flunkie lawyers, I don't want it. Don't know what else you can sue me for either, unless you want the shirt off my back. And I'm sure it's not worth the effort or retainer of someone like you to track me down and take it yourself."

"I'm not a lawyer, Dr. McCoy. And you're not a bartender, not really."

Scraping the limes off the cutting board and into one of the plastic bins, "This job's as good as any other," he shrugged, trying not to think about how much he really hated this job, this new life of his, forced upon him by an unfortunate post-op complication and a senator who did not seem to understand that his (grown) son had understood the risks of the experimental surgery before undertaking it. But Bryan Richardson's death had been the final nail in the coffin, following too closely on his father's death and his wife's miscarriage for him – or the media – to take. Jocelynn had quickly divorced him, adding to the scandal, and things had just grown worse from there, until he'd wound up here, serving drinks to people who probably couldn't spell neurosurgery even they'd been sober.

He meandered down to the other end of the bar, filling a few orders and generally hoping the not-a-lawyer at the bar would go away and leave him to wallow in his misery like a decent person.

The man in the expensive suit obviously was used to getting his way because, when Leo returned to that corner of the bar a quarter hour later, he was still there, nursing one of the whiskies. When Leo glared at him, the man only lifted the other glass and offered it to him once again. "But it's not medicine," he continued as if their conversation hadn't been interrupted.

Bitterly, "Hard to practice medicine without a license."

"And if I said I had a way for you to practice where you didn't need a license?"

Offering the man a look he'd reserved for recalcitrant interns (back when he'd still had interns), "Look, I don't know you or what the hell you want, but, generally, as a rule, I don't take offers to play doctor from strange men in expensive suits."

"The name's Pike, Christopher Pike."

"Well then," he thoroughly rolled his eyes here, though the full force of the gesture was lost to the dim lighting, "Mr. Pike, I'm in enough trouble of my own that I don't need to go courting yours too."

Almost amused, "And what kind of trouble do you think that might be?"

Leo pulled a couple more beers, handing them over to Charlene, who was looking at him from behind Pike's back with a curious, studying look, as if trying to put together a puzzle with pieces that don't quite fit. He didn't answer until she'd disappeared back into the smoky depths of the bar. After all, a man who'd wear a suit that expensive had to have money coming in from _somewhere_, and, if it wasn't from a practice, it couldn't be from anything legal. No sense getting Charlene mixed up in that. "Drugs," Leo suggested causally. "Maybe the Mafia, if it still exists in this day and age. Maybe human trafficking."

"No," Pike snorted, "nothing like that. I just need a doctor to run some routine tests on my team – physicals and vaccinations and the like. If it works out, I'd like you to come on full time. It mightn't be neurosurgery, but it'd be medicine at least and take you interesting places."

"And that sounds _perfectly_ legal."

"As one of my boys would say, _none of the fun things in life are_."

Finding himself starting to smile in spite of himself, he finally took the whiskey offered him and downed half of it in one go. "So, what's the catch then, Mr. Pike?"

"No catch. Like I said, I'm just a businessman looking for the best doctor available for my team. And you're the best doctor out there, period. And I'm in the habit of seeing my boys get the best."

"How many people are we talking about here?" Leo found himself asking, though he'd be damned if he took Pike up on his offer. Yes, it was an opportunity to practice medicine again, a chance the like of which he'd never get again (if he ever got a chance of any sort again), but, despite everything Pike was saying, the whole venture sounded shady as hell. And he _really_ didn't need that shit on top of everything else right now.

"Eight, including yourself, if you choose to join. Room, board, and all the equipment you need provided. You'll even be able to carry on your research, within reason, so long as you're available to patch us all back together."

"How much trouble can eight people get into that you'd need your own concierge doctor?"

"You'd be surprised," was all Pike offered, handing over a business card as Leo downed the last of the whiskey. It read:

Col. Christopher Pike (ret.)  
Vice-President of Operations  
Aquarian Aerospace

and had only a fax number. Before he could ask Pike why a group of (what he only assumed to be) physicists and mathematicians would need a private doctor, he was gone.

Leo tucked the business card in his back pocket and tried to put the whole thing out of his mind. But, as the night pressed on, he couldn't stop thinking about how much he truly hated this place, this city, the back room in which he slept beside bags of salted peanuts, the haze of smoke that constantly hung in the air, and the fact that things would never, ever, get any better, because no one would give him a license ever again and it would be his unfortunate fate to pour the same drinks for the same nameless people at this bar for the rest of his natural life. Which wouldn't be so long, if these thoughts stuck around.

He tossed for a long time on his cot, unable to sleep for the thoughts that haunted his waking mind.

* * *

**Sunday, 5 November, 2028**

Leo dreamed of stars and the lonely sky that night. The burnished gold and bruised purples of twilight gave way to the firefly-lights of stars and dusk's black velvet a thousand times over before giving way, in turn, to the rose and blush and coral of dawn a thousand times more. And, in the 'tween times, there was a fading, shifting fog and the vague, half-remembered sense of being asked questions and made to answer them, thought what was asked and who was asking lay beyond his reach.

Consciousness came back to him in a series of false starts before surrendering its bounty. He dimly remembers someone fetching water and pressing it to his lips, but there's a hazy, half-awake quality to these memories that he can't be sure they aren't figments of his imagination.

His head hurt like he's been drinking, though he can't remember having more than that one glass of whiskey, and there's a sweaty, grungy feeling to his thoughts that makes him think he slept in his clothes. His eyes, too, felt like someone had tried to paint them shut and, when he managed to open them, he found himself in a room too dark to be The White Rabbit's storeroom, with a flickering light somewhere in the vicinity of his right foot that could only mean someone had left the TV on. Not that there was a TV in the storeroom. It took him longer than it should to put two and two together and realize that he couldn't be in The White Rabbit, especially since it felt like there was a real bed, not a cheap cot, under him and there was a scent of day-old pizza and mould, not stale smoke, in the air.

He groaned, sore and stiff, but a voice quickly hushed him, citing, "This is the best part," before he caught a flash of movement out the corner of his eye. The TV, which has been murmuring quietly to itself, suddenly grew louder.

_"I've been doing a lot of thinking. And the thing is, I love you."_

_"What?"_

_"I love you."_

_"How do you expect me to respond to this?"_

Leo squeezed his eyes shut and, opening them again, discovered this wasn't a dream. He tried to move, but all he got for his trouble was a wave of pain that momentarily blinded him and resulted in another groan and an almost audible glare from the voice. The voice, which seemed masculine enough for Leo to guess with some confidence belonged to a man, gave a resigned huff, which was followed by the squeaking of bedsprings and the running of a tap.

The movie continued on.

_"How about you love me too?"_

_"How about I'm leaving?"_

_"Doesn't what I said mean anything to you?"_

_"I'm sorry Harry, I know it's New Year's Eve, I know you're feeling lonely, but you can't just show up here, tell me you love me, and expect that to make everything alright. It doesn't work that way."_

The man came back, this time holding a glass of water, and held it as carefully to Leo's lips as he could without tearing his eyes from the TV. It was hard to make any details out from this angle in the dim light, but it was clear he was upset at being distracted from the movie, even if, if Leo guessed right, it was forty years old. As Leo's mouth felt so cottony he'd have been surprised if he could have made himself understood even if he could think of the appropriate words, he didn't feel much sympathy for the man.

_"Well, how does it work?"_

_"I don't know, but not this way."_

_"Well, how about this way? I love that you get cold when it's seventy-one degrees out; I love that it takes you an hour-and-a-half to order a sandwich; I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts; I love that after I spend a day with you I can still smell your perfume on my clothes, and I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because, when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."_

The man continues to hold the cup to his lips, though he's not managed to tilt it for any of the water inside to make it to Leo's lips, and Leo's muscles seem to be protesting whatever the hell he ended up doing the with last night. Being in a half-star hotel room with a random stranger after a night he can't remember would suggest he'd picked someone up, or someone had picked him up, but, one, he was too dressed for that and, two, he wasn't the kind of person that sort of thing happened to. He's sure there are other, perfectly reasonable reasons for him to have retrograde amnesia in a flea-bag motel, but his head hurts to much to think of them, especially given the man's choice of entertainment.

_"You see, that's just like you Harry. You say things like that and you make it impossible for me to hate you. And I hate you, Harry... I really hate you."_

Whatever came next, Leo didn't hear as, cutting the volume, the man seemed to remember he was trying to play nursemaid (or something) and, apologizing, "Sorry about that. I've just not seen this movie in ages and I stumbled across it waiting for you to wake up. But," he continued, his tone making it clear he thought Leo had done it intentionally, though he did kindly tip the cup enough that he could actually drink from it, "you _did_ wake up right at the end, though."

Snatching the cup away, the were some muffled, shuffling sounds, and the lights flicked on – too brightly for Leo's eyes, making him close them tightly. "What the fuck?" he manages in his surprise.

"I know, it's awful, but, I promise you, the drugs will wear off soon, and when they do you'll be asking why we don't spring for better bulbs. Turn on all the lights and it's still near impossible to read in here without going half-blind. And we can't even open the windows – Pike had Scotty nail them over ages ago.

"But, speaking of Pike, he told me to apologize and all that shit for drugging you. And kidnapping you. Kinda. But we really do need a flight surgeon and Pike's really big on hiring only the best – and, if it's any consolation, I do think he's going to agonize about it for weeks yet and be overly-polite and what have you for a while, so if you've ever wanted a pony or a small third-world country, now's the time to ask 'cause, when he gets like this, he'll probably do just that. Why, the Easter right after we picked up Chekov, the kid mentioned something about missing _pashka_ and, next day, what should arrive but two fucking dozen _pashkas_, straight from some bakery run by a little blue-haired biddy in backwater Russia. You have any idea how hard it is to ship that stuff? It's the kinda thing where you look at it the fucking wrong way and it falls apart.

"So, yeah, sorry. But it's not like you're getting a piss-poor deal here either."

Opening one baleful eye, he looked at the man – kid really, with floppy blonde hair and eyes that were far too blue to be real – and said the only thing that came directly to mind, which was, "Do you ever shut up?"

The kid – 'cause hell he can't think of him as a man when he's acting like this – laughs so heartily that it hurts Leo's tender ears. It's the grandmother of all hangovers he's got here, and-

And that's when he remembers Kirk said something about drugs and kidnapping, and he manages to overcome the brain-body disconnect long enough to pull himself up and start shouting, "What the hell do you mean, drugs?" That's just about as far as it gets, though, 'cause a moment later it's all he can do to keep himself upright, and the kid, seeing this, helps him so he was at least leaning against the poky headboard as he struggled to catch his breath. It's also probably the wrong thing to focus on – kidnapping's probably a bit worse, whatever the moral code – but Leo's a doctor and knows the fucked-up shit drugs can do and, plus, is still more than a little out of it.

"I said we were sorry. And it's nothing illegal, just some amobarbital and maybe a bit of trapanal. It's something they do to all of us, when we're recruited, to make sure we're not spies or thieves or government agents or whatnot. Could've used you around when they dosed me – turns out I'm sensitive or something in whatever exactly is in their truth serum, and I was asleep for nearly a week before I snapped out of it. Or so they tell me. Most that month isn't so clear – spent it finding the bottom of every bottle I could find," he explained calmly and, after making sure Leo wasn't going to topple over, took up residence on his own bed and began flipping channels at a rate Leo couldn't quite process. "Since then, they generally try to make sure that people are sober before dosing them...

"But, yeah, unless you were as drunk as I was, it should be out of your system soon. A hot shower and change of clothes should do the trick, if you want to feel semi-human sooner. No worries, though; Sulu grabbed your duffel – it's on the floor in the bathroom – and, even though the lights are shit, the water's almost always hot. Once you're up to it, I'll take you to meet the gang and get set up and all that."

"Why?" There's a lot more he wants to say to this, but the words seem to get lost on their way to his mouth. Luckily, however, the kid seems to catch onto what he's trying to get at.

"I told you, Pike has a thing about getting only the best. It probably has something to do with his parents or some shit like that," the kid said with an airy wave of his hand. "You're a doctor and we are kind of getting desperate for a flight surgeon. Doesn't justify kidnapping, I know, but Pike seemed to think it was worth it, and Pike's the big boss man. Besides, I think you'll want to stay when you realize what we're doing."

Leo's getting a little better at choking out words. "Which is?"

"Now," said the kid, grinning like a kid in a candy shop and, jumping off his bed with a loud squeak, "that would be telling." And, with that, he was tugged out of bed, pushed into the bathroom, and told to make himself presentable.

* * *

The shower, at the very least, gives Leo time to think. And sober up.

Maybe it's the drugs or maybe he's just fallen that far, but he can't really bring himself to care he's showing in the bathroom of a cheap motel with a complete stranger who just admitting to drugging him right outside the door. His life had gone to hell in a hand basket in a remarkably short time, and if someone actually cares enough to kidnap him, well, that's more than he can bring himself to care about his life at the moment.

So he cleans up, feeling more human and smelling of chamomile bergamot after. The fact that his duffel had clearly been riffled through (and the clothes inside washed and _folded_, for fuck's sake), again, doesn't bother him as much as it should. And it really, really should. After all, he has no idea where he is, what these people want with him, or if he's going to make it out of this alive, but, somehow, it doesn't bother him. He's angry as hell that they drugged him (and why fuck would the vice-president of an aerospace company want to kidnap someone and feed them truth serum in the first place?). But the fact that they spirited him away from The White Rabbit and his non-existence there? He just can't bring himself to be too upset about that. Even if it turns out the whole aerospace thing is a lie, and Pike and the kid in in the next room really are mixed up in something illegal. The kid said they were desperate for a doctor, and, licence or not, he's not the kind of person who'd turn away anyone in need of doctoring.

When he steps out of the closet of a bathroom, he can actually process the sights his eyes are taking in.

The lamp on the table between the beds has been flicked on, it's light honey yellow and pooling mostly on the dark, chipped wood, but it's enough for Leo to see the room looks exactly like every other cheap motel in the world, with pink-and-green comforters, peeling floral wall borders, and dime store prints of farm houses in brass frames, and so gives Leo no idea where he is or what Pike might want with him. (The words _flight surgeon _rattle around, but the only images they bring to mind are out of old World War Two movies and, as such, are quickly dismissed.) There's a pair of old pizza boxes by the door, a couple of crumpled balls of paper that have missed the trash can tucked between the dresser and the wall, and the sheets are crumpled on the bed that Leo had been passed out on, but otherwise the room is unnaturally neat, clean in a manner that spoke of haphazard habit than true desire for organization.

But that's not the interesting part (if any part of this can be said to be more interesting than his kidnapping).

No, the interesting part is the kid, who's lounging on one of the cheap motel beds, flicking through the TV channels again. Despite his earlier antics, he's at least twenty-something, and there's none of the earlier amusement glittering in his eyes when he pauses on a station (it's a news channel, turned too low for Leo to make out, but the picture next to the anchor looks to be of one of the Orion space shuttles) for a moment before almost furiously moving on to the next. He's in jeans and a t-shirt Leo was fairly certain contained a sci-fi joke, and there's a black bomber jacket on the bed beside him.

When he sees Leo, he whistles and snaps the TV off, stuffing his (bare) feet into a pair of (dirty) white sneakers (with orange laces) and his arms into the jacket in the same movement. "Ready? Cool. I'm Jim Kirk, the lead flight engineer, by the way."

"McCoy," Leo says automatically, "Leonard McCoy." At the kid's strange look, he realizes, "But you already knew that."

The kid – _Jim_, he tells his haggard brain – laughs a little at that. "Yeah, kinda did. You've been on the news a lot and, well," he gestures at the TV as he moves to the door, "I watch a lot of TV." Though he's busy unlocking the various bolts and locks on the door (there are at least three that Leo can see, in addition to the chain, and, behind the paisley curtains, the windows are boarded rather thoroughly over), Jim must catch his grimace out the corner of his eye. "Don't worry. Everyone knows Richardson is close friends with Ayel, and everyone with half a brain knows _he's_ in bed with the Romulans. And no one who knows what Romulus and Sons' really gets up to would believe a word of what any of their flunkies say."

Leo, despite having been hounded by Senator Richardson's lawyers for almost four months now, hadn't known any of this. Oh, he'd heard of Boian Ayel, the ultra-conservative senator from Utah who'd been in the news over the last four years doing everything from denouncing his opponents' ungodly and immoral ways to spearheading the latest attempt to bring back the Defence of Marriage Act. He'd even heard of Romulus and Sons', an Italian corporation that had its fingers in every major energy company in the western world. But he'd no idea that Ayel or, by extension, Richardson had anything to do with them, or that this might be a bad thing.

"Thanks, I guess," he mutters as they leave the room. As far as he can tell, there's nothing but cornfields in any direction he can see; cornfields and a road that you could probably drive an hour on before meeting anyone else. Nowhere to run (if he felt like running), though there is a nondescript work van in parked in the lot he could probably borrow (again, if he felt like trying to escape). Which he really doesn't. Which should really bother him more than it does.

"You're welcome. Anyone who's ever said _any press is good press _obviously never had the ugly side of the media turned against them.

"But this," Jim continues without further explanation, though his grin takes on a forced quality as his voice shakes off its momentary bitterness, "is the corporate headquarters of Aquarian Aerospace."

Before he can consider his words, Leo raises an eyebrow and asks, "This dump?" It's probably a side effect of the amobarbital, just like his lack of immediate desire to escape, but when all he has to escape to is The White Rabbit, even a roach coach motel is a step up.

Jim laughs, in a way that suggests he's thought the same thing more than once. "More or less. We've a fancy building about half-hour away in Iowa City with corner offices for the lot of us – I'm the Chief Procurement Officer," he says with another, self-mocking laugh. "But this is the real HQ. We all live here, take turns cooking."

"And you kidnapped me why again?"

"I told you," by this point Jim's palming a surprisingly modern panel by the door labelled _Palmetto Inn Front Office _in peeling gold letters, "we needed a flight surgeon. You were the best I could find and Pike only takes the best. Now me," the door clicks open, revealing a room that looked more like a kitchen/dining room than a corporate headquarters, and Jim ushered him inside, "I thought the kidnapping was unnecessary, that you'd come to us on your own – hell, I basically did the exact same thing three years ago." Jim locks the door behind them and goes to what appears to be a perfectly normal closet, with the exception of the retinal scanner poorly concealed under a print of a wheelbarrow with a broken frame.

When the closet door popped open, revealing an ultra-white elevator that wouldn't have looked out of place in a spy movie, Leo felt pretty certain that something illegal was definitely afoot.

"But," Jim continued, merrily pushing Leo into the elevator, "Pike said we needed you now, not three weeks from now, or however long it would have taken you to get fed up enough bartending to come to us on your own. Need the time for training and all that." There were no buttons in the elevator, but it proceeded downward at an alarmingly steady pace for longer than Leo would have otherwise believed possible.

"Training for what? And why the hell do you keep saying _flight surgeon_? I'm a doctor, not some military sawbones good for only handing out pills and hacking off limbs-"

"Don't underestimate yourself," Jim cut in as the elevator opened onto an equally sterile hallway. "I'm sure we'll get you up to the hacking off limbs level in no time."

"Gee, thanks."

Leading them down the hallway, which curved away from the elevator in two directions, "No problem. You know how to swim?"

Leo sputtered at the non sequitur. "I'm from Georgia."

Jim actually paused at that, contemplative. "I'm going to take that as a yes," he said slowly, as if tasting the words. "And I'd suppose it would be too much to hope for you know how to parachute?" (It was and only earned the kid another sputter.) "I thought so. Well, I guess that's why training usually takes eighteen months. And we only have eight-and-a-half. I guess we can skip out on the flight training, for the most part, but we'll have to block some time for scuba diving too." He'd started walking after the parachuting question and was now near the lip of it, on the verge of disappearing out of Leo's sight as he shouted, "Hey? Spock? Where's somewhere warm I can take our shiny new sawbones for scuba-diving lessons?"

"Why do I need to know how to scuba dive? Or parachute?" Leo called out, hurrying after the kid.

But it wasn't the kid who answered him. Instead, waiting at the mouth of the hall was Pike, dressed in a pale yellow flight suit and wearing a smirk almost as wide as Jim's. "We," he said casually, his words belayed by the simulators and bays of computer banks behind him, "are going to the moon."

* * *

When Leo stopped laughing – which took longer than one would have thought given that there were what appeared to be working models of spaceships and related paraphernalia peppered throughout the large, semi-circular bunker in which he, Pike, and at least three others stood, – he discovered that he'd, at some point, slid down the wall behind him and was now sitting against it. His knees were pressing uncomfortably into his chest, and the rest of him wasn't feeling quite so hot either. Tears, much to his surprise, were streaming down his cheeks.

"That's a good one," he choked out, still struggling for breath. "Pull the other one."

"I fail to see the humour in this situation."

Gathering himself, he answered the latest voice, "People don't _go_ to the moon anymore. Hell, they barely even go into _space _anymore."

"So?" Pike asked, still looking down on him with a bemused expression Leo decided he hated immensely.

"_So_? So governments send people into space, not people hidden in bunkers beneath mouldy hotels in the middle of nowhere. Though," he admitted, pulling himself back to his feet, "you do seem to have all the toys for it."

"Governments may have sent men into space initially, Dr. McCoy, but only when it benefited them. If Soviet Russia hadn't sent up _Sputnik_, the United States would never have worked so hard or so fast to get a man into space, onto the moon. It took less than twelve years after _Sputnik _for Armstrong to walk on the moon. Less than twelve years after that, the space shuttle _Columbia _was being launched for the first time.

"But NASA only launched the _Constitution _six years ago, over forty years later, and already they're talking about scrubbing the last five Orion missions. They're decommissioning the space station and nobody's making any plans to go back. Not us. Not the Russians. And certainly not the Chinese or the Europeans.

"That's the problem with governments – they only do what benefits them, to keep them in power. The age of the Cold War is long over; greed won out out. The idea of bettering humanity for its own sake got put on the back burner, if not lost entirely. People are more concerned these days with radical interpretations of the Koran than _The Communist Manifesto_, and the _mujahideen _aren't interested in space, so neither are the governments fighting them."

As Pike said this, he led Leo down another curving hallway, away from the flight simulators and control panels. There were two doors set into the convex wall and it was into the second one Pike took him. Leo was vaguely aware of his surroundings – the framed pictures of fighter jets and stealth aircraft on the wall behind the desk, some with a younger version of Pike in military dress in them; the side wall, which was floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, with everything from college texts on geology and meteorology to well-loved paperback Hugo Award winners to brightly coloured binders with labels like _NorthropT-42 Falcon Flight Manual _and _STS-107: CAIB Final Report_; the solid wooden desk and the comfortable leather chair he sinks into – in the same way he was only vaguely aware Jim had followed them into the office. He saw these things, took them in, but didn't really understand what they had to do with him. He was a doctor, damn it, not an astronaut, and could barely stand flying as it was without thinking about things that went farther up.

But Pike continued, not noticing or not caring that Leo just didn't seem to get it. "But governments aren't the only organizations out there with the knowledge needed to send people to the moon. _Companies_ built the Saturn rockets. _People_ designed the space shuttles. _Astronauts_," the retired colonel said with a nod towards Jim, "flew the Orion spacecraft. Not governments. Anyone with the money and initiative to do go into space can.

"Which is why we're here. A handful of people with money got together about ten years ago and realized that mankind can do anything it sets out to do; that we should not be willing to stand with our feet on the ground when we can – and should – be exploring the stars. There are numerous shell corporations, other people building the rocket and the shuttle we'll be using, but Aquarian Aerospace is the mask for our astronaut training. We've been at it for months, some of us for years, and we have pilots and engineers and scientists and people who are a mix of all three, but the one thing we don't have is a flight surgeon.

"And that brings us back to you, Dr. McCoy. Because we're not planning on a simple land-on-the-moon operation, to be ended as soon as we get back to Earth and the government decides that it doesn't like free enterprise doing what it will not. We're intending to set up a base for further exploration and expeditions, and I'm not sending a crew into space for a long-term lunar mission without someone who knows how to put them back together after they manage to, inevitably, hurt themselves.

"So, I know we went about this the wrong way. We shouldn't have kidnapped you and maybe we shouldn't have drugged you either, but we did and I apologize. Maybe our ends justify the means. Maybe you'll forgive us in time for it. But, medical licence or not, you're the best damn doctor in the country. You could go back to slinging beers for minimum wage, never to practice what you love again, or you could come with us, to the moon, and make history."

"You say that," he snorted, feeling vaguely as if this were all a dream from which he'd wake, alone in The White Rabbit and with nothing in his life to look forward to, "like I have a choice."

"There's always a choice. Sometimes, though, the other options are so unbearable it seems that way."

And that was how Leo became an astronaut.

* * *

a/n: well, first thing's first - I know I have a tonne of other stories going at the moment, but this one snuck into my head on a Thanksgiving trip to Williamsburg and I _couldn't get it the fuck out_. I ended up writing it on _paper_ and translating it to become this first chappie. I am a terrible person for doing it when I've at least 3 other things I should be working on, but... yeah. It's 00:41 in the morning and I'm posting this, so, yeah, I'm kinda obsessed with this idea at the moment.

second, more details on the space age as per this AU will come in the next few chappies, but the Constellation Program (the thing that was going to replace the space shuttles) and Project Orion (the actual shuttle part of the program) are real things, only they've pretty much been cancelled in our reality. There's also Project Altair (which is the lunar lander part of the program), but, this AU at least, that part was scrapped to save money. So, for the purposes of this AU, the space shuttles stopped flying in 2011 (as they will in reality), but the Orion missions started flying manned missions in 2023. Since then, there have been 14 Orion missions, with the 15th scheduled for Jan of 2029.

third, it's too early in the morning/late at night to think of anything more that's important for you to know for this AU, but feel free to reveiw or pm me with questions.


	2. nothing routine

_"____There's nothing routine about flying to the Moon. I can vouch for that."__  
_Jim Lovell in ___Apollo 13_

* * *

The road to hell is a gradual one, unmarked and uninteresting until the very last. In his more philosophical moments, Jim alternatively thinks a pack of cigarettes, the Third Chechen War, and a twenty-two by twelve inch piece of insulating foam is the thing that set him off down this road. Sometimes he'll even go so far as to blame the Wright Brothers, but that one's a bit of a stretch and even he knows it, so mostly he just blames the foam.

* * *

**Wednesday, 15 November, 2028** (L-244 days until launch)

"_It is time. The ships are leaving for Valinor. Go now, before it is too late."_

"_I have made my choice."_

Jim could hear the door opening, signalling the return of his roommate, but gave no sign he'd noticed, only burrowed deeper into the nest of pink-and-green blankets he'd made for himself in a futile attempt to keep warm. He half-hoped that, if unacknowledged, Bones would go away and let him finish watching his movie rather than drag him down for the physical that he'd managed to conveniently forget and reschedule three times already. He was tired anyway – he'd been in the sims all morning and most of last night – and nobody could be expected to take a physical when they were sleep deprived, could they? Or when it was this fucking cold.

"_He is not coming back. Why do you linger here when there is no hope?"_

His nefarious plan, however, didn't seem to be working. "Jim...?" he asked, almost tentatively, which was ridiculous, of course, because Bones didn't do tentative. He'd only known the man for a week-and-a-half, but already Jim knew this. Tentative men didn't spend their first words after waking up from an amobarbital-induced haze chewing out their wardens for talking to much. Tentative men didn't chew out famous news anchors when they came to interview them about the death of certain senator's sons, much less so during a live broadcast, either – but he had taken to pretending that he hadn't any idea the doctor's face had been in the news and less reputable tabloids for months now, as this seemed to make the doctor happy.

He liked trying to make the doctor happy. The man looked like he's not known anything close to happy – or even contentment – in ages. Jim's only managed it once so far, but he liked the doctor's laugh and wanted to hear it more often.

He tried not to analyse this last thought too closely. It could go nowhere good.

"_There is still hope."_

"Jim," Bones repeated, less questioning now and more annoyed.

Jim cautiously slid a hand out from under the blankets, showing he was still alive under them and stalling for a minute longer. It didn't work, though, because a moment later the doctor had marched over to the TV and flicked it off, right in the middle of the scene. "I'm beginning to think you've some sixth sense for interrupting just when things are getting interesting, Bones."

"Stop calling me that. And that movie has to be as old as you are."

"If I do, will you let me finish watching this before dragging me off to your torture chamber?" Or maybe sleep five or eight or ten hours first? 'Cause that would be just great too.

"It's a routine physical, you infant; nothing to whine about."

"So you say."

Bones moved the few inches from the TV to the foot of the bed. Grabbing the blankets there, "Hurry up," he tugged. "It's freezing."

Jim, having not realized his roommate was a sadist, hadn't thought to grab hold of the blankets before they were flung onto the floor. That being said, the noise of surprise he made was just that – a noise of surprise – and _not_ an undignified squawk of horror, thank you very much.

"Brat."

Jumping off the bed and sliding his shoes onto his feet, Jim leered, "You're just upset I was dressed underneath. Well, I should warn you, Ma taught me never to put out on the first date, or," he said, tone going musing as he looked around quickly for where he'd sucked his jacked two hours earlier, having decided that leather and six or seven layers of paisley blankets _just do not work _together, no matter how cold it was. He found it on Bones' bed (which he'd stripped of several of its blankets, though the doctor seemed to have yet realized this) and quickly turned sleeves right side out before pulling it on. Already his teeth were clattering. Iowa was the fourth circle of hell on it's good days, but, when winter starts rolling around like this, it's almost unbearable. It's almost enough to make him dream of Texas. But only almost, "at least, not until you've sprung for dinner at some place nicer than you'd find in town. You do that on the first date, I'm all yours."

"Of course she did."

"Well, her actual words were more along the lines of _you better not knock somebody up unless you damn well mean it, Jimmy, _but it amounts to the same thing in the end, doesn't it?"

"Of course it does, Jimmy boy_,_" Bones drawled, rolling his eyes and giving him a push towards the door.

"If I were to tell you I was perfectly healthy, you'd believe me, would you?"

"It's warmer downstairs."

Well, there was no faulting _that _argument. Still feeling rather put upon, "Lead on, but know I only go out of duress."

The laugh the doctor gave then was rather dark, but Jim took it as a win nonetheless. Even if it was too cold to bear thought out.

* * *

**Tuesday, 12 March, 2019**

The cars were zooming past him as he sat on the curb outside a gas station that had clearly seen better days, though the traffic in this part of Chicago wasn't so bad this time of day. He was staring down at the packet of cigarettes he'd just bought, feeling somewhat hollow inside. The man behind the counter had handed over the box without so much as looking at him funny, let alone carding him. Jim was barely sixteen and, while he didn't exactly look it, he looked young enough still to bear further scrutiny. He half-heartedly considered going back in and buying a case of beer, just to see if he could, but eventually decided against it. It was only a quarter to nine in the morning and, even if Chicago was a couple hundred times larger than anything in Iowa, it would probably be considered a little odd to be buying alcohol so early.

Jim took one last drag from his cigarette before flicking it out into the street in front of him, watching idly as it was ground into the pavement by the next passing car. He wondered if Ma had even realized he'd not come home last night. It didn't matter so much now – he'd graduated early, last semester, and there was no reason to be home 'cept for the fact he'd no reason to be anywhere else either.

Oh well. It was Sam's birthday tomorrow. He'd probably call and, if he did, he'd want to talk to Jim. She'd realize he was gone then.

He flipped the box over his his hand, somewhat bemused by the wording of the surgeon general's warning and wondered if such things ever actually got people to quit these things. Still, all the fun was gone if people were just going to let him buy packs without any hassle at all. He should probably toss them and find somewhere more exciting to hang until Ma noticed he's gone, since it's likely to be awhile. Hell, he should probably go home, but that would leave him at home, alone, with Ma, and that path never led to good things.

He stood and moved back over towards his motorcycle, momentarily surprised to see the car parked a the pump behind it – a black Audi A8, the new model that had only come out this year that cost well over half of what Ma made a year – and the man in the dress blues of an Air Force officer next to it.

(_Looking back on it, Jim could never decide why he did it, but,_) with the hand still holding the cigarette pack, he offered the officer a casual salute as he made his way back to the pumps.

Whatever the reason behind it, the salute caught the officer's attention, and, before Jim had even gotten back on the bike, the man asked if he could bum a cigarette. Considering the expense of the car and the silver eagles on his collar, Jim would have guessed the man could afford his own smokes, but shrugged and tossed the pack to the man anyway with a grunted, "Keep 'em, Colonel," and turned back towards his bike once more. He'd only have tossed them otherwise, and someone might as well get some use out of his mother's five-sixty.

The colonel, however, didn't see this as the end of conversation Jim had clearly intended it to be and asked, "Military brat?" as if it was actually appropriate, or even vaguely kosher, to ask such things of strangers half his age in inner-city gas stations. Part of him hoped that the man wasn't all as clean cut as he appeared to be with his immaculate uniform, perfectly trimmed hair (dark, greying at the temples), and earnest blue eyes. A kidnapping or the like would be exciting, would show Ma.

Jim knows this line of thought isn't exactly healthy, but he's how he deals. Ma's always been a little off since Dad died (or so he's been told; he's not in a position to know otherwise); then again, Jim suspects anyone who'd seen their husband killed on national television would be a little off afterwards. It gets worse when she's around him, 'cause he looks (again, so he's been told) so much like Dad. So he tries to stay away as much as possible. If she notices, she's never said anything about it.

"Could say that." Both his parents had served and Sam was down in Maxwell, at the Officer's College. Grampa Tiberius had been in the Air Force too, and so had his father and grandfather, way back to World War One, when planes were being used in warfare for the first time as part of the Army Air Service. Every Kirk man who'd served his nation in the last century had died for it. (_Sam hadn't yet, not by this point, but he would before Jim's twentieth birthday. Such was the Kirk family curse, to die at the helm of their vessels. He has no proof, but he suspects that if he were able to go farther back than his grandfather's grandfather, he'd find more of the same, with death coming on sailing ships rather than in flying machines._) If that didn't make him a military brat, nothing did. "But why are you talking to me, man?"

"'Cause you look like a kid who has his head screwed on right, not the kind that I'd expect to find loitering in this part of Chicago during school hours."

"I don't need to explain myself to you." Then, for some reason, he went and did it anyway. (_Looking back, he knew that it was because the colonel was at least talking to him, acknowledging his existence, when every other adult in his life saw him as a shadow of his father, a younger version of his brother. He would have talked to anybody, if only they didn't expect him to behave like the hero's son, the soldier's brother.) _"I'm done with school."

"Dropped out?"

Vaguely insulted, "Graduated."

"You look awfully young for that."

"What can I say, I'm a prodigy or something." With a derisive snort, "A regular _wunderkind_."

"Well, _wunderkind_, I'm Christopher Pike."

"That supposed to mean something to me?"

"Only that I'd like to know your name in return."

"What's it matter? In about five seconds I'm going to hop on my bike and drive the hell away from here, and neither of us is going to remember this conversation after tomorrow." (_This, it would turn out, would be a lie. This would end up being one of the most important conversations of his life, the one he'd start his autobiography off with, if he ever wrote one. Jim suspects that, for many of the people who would one day wind up working for Aquarian or its sister companies, Pike was be the star of many similar conversations._) "Find someone else to pander to in your old age."

"It's not pandering. You see, I know something about loose ends, about wanting to do something more with your life, and I think you do too. You've seen the worst the world has to offer, but I'm betting you've seen the best too, if maybe only in a dream, and you want nothing more than to see that dream become a reality and spread across the nations, throughout the stars. You feel like you were meant for something _more_ – something better than anything you might find here, something special."

Captious out of habit, he could still feel his pulse quicken, his eyes widen at Colonel Pike's words, he turned towards his bike a third time, this time to hide his reaction. "You don't know jack shit about me." That didn't stop it from being true, though. For as long as he'd been alive, he'd been plagued by the idea of living without purpose, dying without meaning, and what he wanted more than anything was to be something – it mattered not what – to someone and remembered for it when he died. He knew not why, though he figured tales of his forefathers going down in blazes of glory had something to do with it. In was more than that though. It was deep and visceral and as part of him as the coding of his DNA.

But Ma had it in her head that Jim was going to be a lawyer. Lawyers were safe and respectable and rarely got blown up or shot at or killed. Sam may have run off and joined up without her knowledge, but Jim was still in her clutches and, because she was the one footing the bills, he was being shipped off in the fall to take pre-law at some New England school with too much ivy on its walls, with hardly any say in the matter whatsoever. She refused to even entertain the possibility that he wanted to fly, to see the stars like Dad had.

Jim's frown only deepened at the reminder as he turned back to the colonel and saw his determined expression. He could easily just hear Pike out and leave. Yes, that was what he would do, hear him out and leave.

"Don't I? Seems to me like I know a lot more than you would like. I also know the one place where you'd have any chance of being happy is in the service. En-"

"Enlist?" the idea was so obscene Jim found himself unable to hold his tongue. "You guys must be way down in your recruiting quota for the month."

But still the colonel continued, though the Audi's gas tank had to be long since full, though he had to know how poorly Jim was taking his suit. "You said there are people in your family who've served, so you know what the armed forces are, their importance – not just for peacekeeping, but to help make that world you've dreamed about come to pass. A smart kid like you could rise far and rise fast."

"We done?"

The colonel looked as if he was clearly anything but, but still nodded and pulled the nozzle out of the tank. "I'm done." Jim was on his bike and motoring out of the station in three second flat, but the roar of the engine couldn't block out Pike's parting shot, "There's a recruiting station in Pilsen, off Ashland. Tell the sergeant there I sent you."

It wasn't until he was on the 88, an hour outside of Chicago, that he realized that, throughout their conversation, Pike had not once touched the cigarettes he'd asked to borrow.

(_Later, this would seem heavy and significant to Jim, though he'd never go so far as to call it fate or God or some other shit like that. But the fact he hadn't smoked stuck with him, forced him to think about what Pike had said, no matter that thinking about it made the reality of his current situation that much worse. He'd always sort of planned to bear Ma's plans until he turned eighteen and could go off and do his own thing, whatever it might be, but, before the month was over, he had succeeded in conning her into to letting him visit Sam over Easter. _

_(No sooner had he gotten off the plane at Dannelly Field before than he was begging his brother to help him sign up; he was enlisted by the end of the holiday and off to Lackland for basic training before the week was done._

_(By the time anyone realized he'd only been sixteen, Jim was already flying B-2 Spirits over Chechnya and Sam's U-2 had been shot down in Talysh Mountains.)_

**

* * *

**

Saturday, 18 November, 2028

(L-241 days)

"Okay, Sistine, feel like taking this from the top?"

Christine Chapel sighed on the other end of the headset. "It's almost midnight, Jim. Don't you think you should start packing it up?"

"You're an hour behind, Sistine; it's already Saturday here. And just one more run. You'll be home and in bed before the sun comes up in Bozeman, I promise."

"Promises, promises, Jimmy."

Smiling broadly at the control panel above him, he could only laugh and say, "You know you love me. All the dials are reset on my end. You ready?"

"Just give me one sec. Need to pull up a new playlist."

Jim laughed again and leaned back in the seat of the lunar vehicle trainer. He liked Christine, he honestly did. She worked in Montana, at the marketing company that was a front for what would be their mission control, but they'd been getting together once or twice a week like this for years now so that he could have some one-on-one time in the simulators. She would pipe music into his headset – something that they definitely couldn't do during a normal sim – and they would tease each other about, oh, anything and everything. She was kinda like the big sister he never had, though they'd only met once in person, at a Fourth of July picnic two years back.

The music began to play and he could only shake his head. "You and your eighties hair bands, Sistine."

"No worse than you and your movie obsession. Setting the clock to 98:54:16 ground elapsed time. Simulation to start in thirty seconds." At nearly ninety-nine hours into the mission, the Enterprise would, if things went according to plan, be coming out of communications blackout after their first orbit.

"Mission clock set to 98:54:16 g.e.t. Showing twenty seconds to simulation start."

"Ten seconds... five... _Enterprise_, this is Bozeman. We're reading your telemetry. It's good to see you again."

"You too, Bozeman," Jim relaxed, hearing Journey dimly in the background and remembering... "You missed one hell of a show."

With an audible smirk, "We're reading you at a velocity of seven point one six three feet per second, at a distance from the moon of fifty-two point six nautical miles. Copy?"

"Bozeman, _Enterprise_, copy your readings. Request Go/No Go for lunar descent."

"You have Go for lunar descent, repeat, Go for lunar descent."

Jim, who'd been sitting in the seat of the LVT idly until this moment, shifted and tightened the straps on his harness. The LVT was an exact mock-up of the lunar decent vehicle that was being built by one of Aquarian's sister companies near Bozeman, designed to act and feel like the small craft they would use to go from the shuttle to the moon in every way. With the exception of gravity. Which meant that, while in space the lunar module's five man crew would sit in the craft much like one would do a car, on Earth one lay flat on one's back to operate the controls. Jim didn't much mind – it reminded him of the old Apollo sims – but it did give him a hell of a backache after a while. "Moving into lunar module now. Stand-by in thirty seconds for comm break."

"Preparing for shift to LDV frequencies in ten seconds. Standing by."

There was a moment when, as Jim pretended to shift his headset over from the shuttle comm system to that of the LVD that the only thing he heard was Steve Perry, almost half a century gone, crying out, _someday, love will find you; break those chains that bind you_, as he counted for the five, ten, fifteen beats necessary to simulate the comm blackout. And then, "Bozeman, this is _Aquarius_. Preparing to start lunar descent check-list."

"Copy _Aquarius_. Standing by." Then, with a snort of laughter, "So the LDV's _Aquarius_ this time 'round?"

"If you can play eighties hair bands in sims, I can name the lunar module after sixties Broadway musicals. 'Sides, it worked for Thirteen... Uploading telemetry from _Enterprise_ now..."

* * *

And so it went for nearly an hour, until _Aquarius_ was preparing to undock from the command modulein the simulation. Again, if things went according to plan, _Enterprise_ would be preparing to pass behind the moon again. Once on the dark side, the lunar lander would make its way down into the Shackleton Crater, located in the South Pole-Aitken Basin.

There were distinct benefits to settling the dark side, not the least of which were politically motivated, but it would also mean the only communication the ground crew would have with the outside world would be via the command module, and they'd experience a comm blackout each time _Enterprise_ passed back around to the near side of the moon. Or when the shuttle, designed for orbital re-entry, made the long four day voyage back to Earth.

"..._Aquarius_, Bozeman. Looking good for separation. _Enterprise_ CAPCOM confirms."

"Roger, Bozeman; Sulu's giving me the Go on this end. Hatches are being sealed... Cabin pressure is holding at five point two. Umbilicals have been detached." But, of course, there was no one to seal the doors, or give the green light from _Enterprise_, not even in the simulation. It was only him and Christine and her playlist, now piping Boston into the LVT louder than was really necessary, even at two am in a deserted training hanger. "Power and environmental holding."

"Copy that, _Aquarius_, our computers here are showing the same thing... Stand-by for communications blackout in two minutes... You boys have any parting words?"

"You wait until things cool down and we can get those comm satellites in orbit. It'll be like I never left, Sistine, just you see. You couldn't get rid of me if you tried. Standing by for blackout in ninety seconds."

There was silence for a moment, the playlist suddenly ending, and then, in a voice softer than he usually heard from Christine, "Jim...?"

"Yeah, Sistine?"

"What's the dark side like?"

Jim paused in his movements, breathing out a quiet, "Oh, Sissy..." before pulling his hand back from the switch he'd been about to flip and leaning back in his chair. His eyes drifted away from the navigation computer and towards the small, thick window that looked blackly out into the training hanger. The simulation was forgotten as he lost himself in memories.

"The first thing you notice is how bright it seems – no _maria_ on the far side, not really, and not even the basins look that dark. Oh, there are are craters, and mountains, and rilles, but it all sort of looks like the world the first clear morning after this terrible blizzard that's left a foot or two of snow on the ground: If you look hard enough, you can see the remnants of all the violence underneath all the snow, but mostly its like this beautiful, untouched thing that wasn't real until you looked out your window.

"And it's this new world, Sissy, this brand new world that's just waiting for you to explore. You don't want to turn your head or blink for even a moment, 'cause it's all so perfect you think you might wake up if you do... And, at the same time, its all you can do to keep from reaching out your hand, 'cause, if you do, it'll be the face of God you touch, or as close as man will ever get to it in your lifetime, and you don't want to touch it, don't want to make it real, 'cause, if you do, it'll no longer be perfect, and you'll be inviting all the anger and the hatred and the sins that man had polluted the Earth with onto this virgin world...

"And so you just stand there, torn with indecision, looking down on this snow-covered Eden, unable to do anything but bask in the wonder of it all, Sissy; the wonder of what man has accomplished, and the wonder of what the universe has been able to do all on its own."

The silence dragged, lacking even Christine's playlist in the background, but it's not uncomfortable, only soaked in memories. Seven days, two hours, nine minutes – that was how long Orion 10 had remained in selenocentric orbit, and he hadn't been able to tear himself away from the window the entire time. Gary had laughed at him, told him he looked more excited than a kid in a candy shop – well, his exact words involved something about Vegas and a strip club, but Jim hadn't really been paying attention to him at the time and, really, who could blame him?

He finally turned back to the navigation computer and found that, as far as the sim was concerned, they were five minutes into communications blackout. Christine should have started playing the team that would be left behind in _Enterprise_ and _Aquarius_ should have been halfway through the undocking procedures by now. Jim mentally chewed himself out for allowing himself to get distracted like that and grabbed for the cue cards he kept, like any good pilot, in his flight suit pocket. Sure, it sometimes felt he could do all the damn checklists in his sleep, but it was better to be safe than sorry when you were two hundred thousand odd nautical miles from home.

Jim snorted. _Better to be safe than sorry_, was it? Mulhall would never believe him if he told her...

"Looks like we're going to have to roll back the clock Sistine. I-" he paused, patting his chest pocket and finding it empty, not full of (somewhat worn and pencil-annotated) cue cards. "Fuck it, where are they? I had the cards when we were doing the engine start-up sequence..." He shifted around in his seat, looking for where they might have fallen, but he's strapped in so he doesn't fall backwards and break something (most likely him) on the panels below and can't see anything.

"You mean the cards under your seat?"

"Yeah, thanks Bones. Would you mind-?" Jim paused as his mind catches up with his mouth, twisted about in his seat as best he could, and looked behind him. "Hey, Bones, what are you doing here?"

"Came to investigate why someone was blasting God-damn _Boston_ at two o'clock in the fucking morning loud enough I could hear it all the way from the infirmary."

"Oh? What were you doing in the infirmary anyway?" From the way his hair was mussed, it might've been sleeping. Especially if he'd not stormed out here the moment Jim had switched the music to speakers.

"What was _I_ doing in the infirmary?" Bones said in a curious way Jim can't quite put words to, but reminds him vaguely of images he once saw of the eruption of one of Io's active volcanoes, Surt. An explosion, they called it; an outburst. He'd looked out of place in the LVT until that moment (no, not out of place, but somewhat lost, like his whole world had been turned upside down, like he hadn't even looked after they'd kidnapped him and told him they were taking him to the moon. Maybe, just maybe, the idea of what they were doing had finally hit him), "What are _you_ doing in this God-forsaken _thing_ at two o'clock in fucking morning?"

Instinctively, Jim put his hand out to brush a bit of panelling that wasn't too covered by buttons and data read-outs, even as he kept an eye on Bones, should he decide to freak out. "There, there, Betsy, he doesn't mean it."

"Betsy? Good God man, do you give nicknames to _everything_?"

A bright, feminine laugh floated through the speakers as Jim offered, "Only the ones I like," and his most brilliant smile. It was probably utterly ridiculous given the angle, but Christine had ruined the moment and, anyway, Bones' tone didn't seem to be one of panic, so, whatever it was he'd seen, it wasn't anything to worry too much over, even if it remained a concern.

Into the mike he still wore, he pouted, "Shut up, Sistine," and began to extricate himself from the straps that held him. It was obvious the wasn't going to get any more sim work done tonight. This morning. What the fuck ever.

"Is this the new flight surgeon you've been talking about? I like him. Sounds like he'll be able to keep you in check, at least."

"I resent that, Sistine, I really do. But this is Bones. Fuck. I mean Dr. Leonard McCoy." Jim made a face at that. Who the hell named their kid _Leonard_ in this day and age anyway? "Bones, Christine Chapel."

"I'm one of the CAPCOMs," Christine explained. "And it may not be two here yet, I'm turning in. We can cover the descent sequence some other time. Nice to meet you, Dr. McCoy, and thanks for the talk, Jim. Night."

"Night, Sistine." Jim cut the speakers quickly, 'cause dead air played at rock-and-roll decibels was not good for anyone's morning, and rolled out of his seat. Seeing the doctor was still eyeing the equipment around them uncertainly, he took pity on the man and, slinging an arm around his shoulders, pulled him out of the LVT. "I'll give you the run-down of all the systems tomorrow. I promise it's not so scary once you actually know what everything's for."

"That's not it," Bone's said, trying to pull out of Jim's grasp. The mock-up of the lunar descent vehicle didn't have quite enough room to do so successfully, but Jim let him go anyway. After all, the hatch was only large enough for one, even if it was designed for that one to be wearing a lunar excursion suit.

"Oh?"

"Well, maybe a little, but I think it's more than justified to be leery of flying in _anythin'_ that's going to be strapped on top of a _rocket_."

"Bones, Bones, Bones – we're not going to be strapped on _top_ of the Ares V, we're going to be strapped on the _side_ of the external fuel tank, _next_ to the rockets, and, honestly, NASA's launched fourteen of them so far – well, fifteen if you count the stage one test – and _none_ of them have blown up yet. Not even the test flight."

"There's a first time for everything..."

"Well, isn't _someone_ cranky when he stays up past his bedtime?"

"I was happily asleep until _someone_ thought it would be a good idea to pay some forty-"

"Fifty."

"-_fifty_ year old song at full volume in a place where other people have to live and work. At two in the damn morning."

"First, everyone loves "More than a Feeling." It's like the classic rock song.

"Second, you do have a perfectly good bed upstairs that you could be sleeping in, rather than the infirmary. I mean, granted, the beds upstairs are typical motel fare, but they're like eight times better than a chair. Especially any chairs we have here. Well, except the one in Pike's office, but he's a tad possessive about it and like _knows_ if someone else has used it. Or, at least, been in his office. I've _still_ not figured out how he organizes his bookshelves, and I've been here three years... So keep that in mind if you want to try to steal one of his books.

"Oh, and third? It was Sistine's music. She goes through phases – be glad you missed the summer of the top forty, though the month where it was nothing but Beethoven got a little trying. I mean, I like classical as much as the next person, but-"

"Jim, you talk too much," Bones snapped, veering towards the coffee maker, his scowl growing deeper than usual. Not that Jim really knew, having only helped kidnap the guy a fortnight ago, but still.

"Maybe... You alright man? You seem off. I mean, we may have kidnapped you, but we're not going to hold you prisoner or anything. If there are people you want to call or something, so long as you don't talk about the project, I can pull you up an outgoing line. Or I can take you into the city – it's my turn to go into the office on Monday and pretend that we work there, but you can tag along if you want. Get out of this place for an afternoon, you know. We can get you some new clothes or hit a bar or go up the T-38 or something."

"I- Wait," the doc sputtered, "What?"

"Things to do in Iowa City. It's not much, but it's a hell of a lot better than Riverside, believe you me. If you really want to go somewhere special, I can see about dragging you along to meet the stockholders. Hell, they'll probably wantto meet you anyway. But an afternoon in Iowa City isn't going to put us too behind in your training. I mean, you said the other day you'd almost finished the last of the books Pike got you, and you've already poked and prodded and scanned the hell out of us – which I could have done without, thank you oh so very much – and, if we get you started on the sims this week, we can probably get you in for scuba diving before Christmas." There was a place in Troy, Kansas the team used to keep up their training, but fitting an intro class for Bones around what they'd already planned for the others was going to be hard. Plus Pike had been talking about doing some deep sea diving as a group somewhere warm around New Years, so he wanted to make sure Bones knew the ropes before then, so he could join in the fun... Besides, they'd have to wait on the parachuting until February anyway if they wanted the weather to agree with them. Which it was best to do, seeing as how it'd be an intro class for that too.

"No, it's- I mean, what's wrong with my clothes?"

It didn't seem like what Bones had actually intended to say, but Jim shrugged and answered, "Besides the fact it looks like you've not bought anything new since you were in college? I thought you doctors were supposed to be all button-up shirts and ties."

"Says the man with orange shoelaces."

Jim looked down at his sneakers, then back up at Bones, who seemed to have forgotten the idea of _sleep in a real bed _in favour of trying to see how much coffee he could drink in one sitting. "The old ones broke. I needed new ones. The store had these, black, and white. And, really, why settle for boring?"

Bones poured himself more coffee.

_Ah, hell_, Jim decided and made himself some tea. Bones eyebrow seemed to twitch involuntarily when he saw. He seemed to be taking it as a personal offence that Jim hated the taste of coffee. Though it might've been the mug itself, which asked in bright green letters if the drinker knew where his towel was.

Shrugging again, "Seriously, though, what's wrong? You look like shit – not the_ it's the middle of the night, why am I still awake _kind of shit either. It's the _somebody just kicked my puppy, then ran it over with a steam roller _kind of shit. I can understand if you don't want to talk to me about it, seeing as I kinda got forced on you, but, regardless of what you may think, I just want you to be happy-" And, fuck, he'd not meant to say that part out loud. Maybe he should go to bed if he was starting to get punch drunk. Or start drinking caffeinated teas.

But, really, was it so bad? He wanted all his friends to be happy, and Bones mightn't know it yet, but he was definitely a friend.

Still, if Bones noticed his slip, he didn't say anything, just stared (if possible) even more morosely into his coffee. After a moment, "I caught the tail end of your conversation with Christine..."

"Oh." He coloured a little. "Well, I tend to romanticize it a bit – _the high untresspassed sanctity of space _and all that."

"No, it's not it – though there was that – it's just," Bones was colouring too, though fuck if Jim knew why. It was curious. "I didn't- I hadn't- God, Jim, I didn't know you'd-"

"Hmm?" It took Jim a moment to realize what Bones was (or, rather, wasn't) saying, having been trying rather too hard to figure out why the doc might find the subject (whatever it was) embarrassing. He tried to keep the blush from spreading when he realized he'd been caught at it. "Oh? Oh! Yeah, I've been. Thought you knew. Was in the Air Force. Made it up to Colonel before they kicked me out; pretty sure they would have made it dishonourable and stripped me of rank if it wouldn't have caused a bigger mess in the papers. Took away my pension and VA benefits, though...

"But, yeah, they pulled me out of the war in the Caucasus when they started up the Constellation Program for astronaut training. Piloted Orion 3 and Orion 6. Got to command Orion 10 – first people in almost fifty-three years to orbit the moon. They didn't give us ticker tape like they did for Borman, Lovell, and Anders – they save those for sports teams these days – but they did give us medals and call us heroes. A month later I had a... disagreement with the NASA Administrator and, well..." He raised his hands. "Here I am."

* * *

**a/n:** well, it's been a while, hasn't it? in my defense, I actually tried to work on some of my other stuff first, failed, tried to write this in Bones' POV, decided that, for all I wanted to stick to one POV for this story, Jim's voice was just coming through in this chapter and I should give into it, and wrote this. Everything you see here was written in like 4 days... everything else was deleted.

That being said, I don't think there's too much to explain for this chapter. The stuff about the Third Chenchen War comes from a book I read called _The Next 100 Years_, which is basically a political forcaster's veiw of the 21st century. The first 10 years have been surprisingly accurate... at least as far as the big picture of things.

What else? The Gary mentioned is obviously Gary Mitchel, from "Where No Man Has Gone Before;" Mulhall is Ann Mulhall from "Return to Tomorrow," who has the dubious the distinction of being the highest ranking female officer in TOS (she was an Lt. Commander); in this verse, both are astronauts. Gary piloted Orion 7 and Orion 10, and is slated to command Orion 15 (and is currently a naval captain). Mulhall was commander of Orion 2 (the first manned mission since the shuttles, in this verse) and Orion 6; she's now a Rear Admiral.

Oh, and one last bit for this verse: Orion 10, Orion 12, and Orion 14 have orbited the moon. Each carried a crew of four. Of the eleven other missions, seven have docked with the International Space Station _(4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13)_ and the remainder have only orbited the Earth. Orion 15 is scheduled to dock with ISS and launches 25.1.2029. There are five missions slated after this, all of which dock with the ISS to continue its deconstruction, but Congress is talking about slashing at least 3 of these.

Any other questions, comments, concerns, queries, and so on are more than welcome, as are reveiws.


	3. the way people are

_"It's too bad, but the way American people are, now that they have all this capability, instead of using it, they'll probably just piss it all away."  
_

Lyndon B Johnson - 36th President of the United States

* * *

Aquarian Aerospace is simultaneously the best and worst thing to ever happen to Leonard McCoy. To his complete lack of surprise, Colonel James T. Kirk, retired, was responsible for the vast majority of the worst parts. To his utter astonishment, the man is also the reason behind nearly all of the good.

The first he reminded Jim of regularly. The second he refused to acknowledge, even to himself. That didn't, however, stop botfh from being equally true.

* * *

**Wednesday, 6 December, 2028** (L-223 days)

He didn't know what time it was, only that it was some ungodly hour of the morning and that, regardless of what popular news channels might claim, he did not deserve this. This, of all things, he did not need.

"Jim, turn the TV off and go to bed."

"But honey," he whined in false falsetto, "I thought you said you had a headache."

Leo was sure Jim couldn't see his glare in the flickering light of the television, but he glared anyway as he flung the covers back. It was too late to have to deal with this insanity, and far too cold. "Now I do, you idiot. Seriously, what fifty year old movie could be so interesting that its worth keeping both of us up?"

"Not a movie," Jim said, then, more repentantly, "and I wasn't trying to wake you up – I turned the TV and everything."

With a sigh, "I know Jim, I'm just tired." Scotty had spent most the day fitting him for a spacesuit (and Leo _still_ couldn't get his mind around that) and yammering about the spaceship the boys in Bozeman were putting the final touches on. He couldn't say which was more exhausting: suffering through the alterations done to thirteen layers various layers of clothing (some of which, to make it worse, were made up of of Mylar, Teflon, Dacron, and other materials more usually seen in bullet-proof vests and non-stick cooking pans), or having to deal with the Scot's enthused description of the _Enterprise_ spacecraft and her as-yet unnamed lunar lander. Either way, he was tired and wanted to know what it was Jim had deemed worthy of interrupting his REM patterns for the third time this week, if only so he could curse it properly. In the morning. "What you watching?"

"_The Tonight Show_."

Leo blinked at that. "Not your usual middle-of-the-night movie fare."

"What can I say? I like to shake things up from time to time. Keeps things fresh."

"Fresh?"

"You know, exciting. Boredom is death... or maybe death is boredom? I dunno. Someone said something along those lines once, I think. Either way, you've sometimes got to take extreme measures to stave it off."

"Thus _The Tonight Show_?"

"Yes," he nodded vigorously, as if pleased Leo was catching on, and patted a spot on the bed next to him. "Come on, make yourself comfortable; it should be interesting – they're supposed to be interviewing Gary Mitchell – but we should have about five minutes, give or take, before he comes on."

"Who's Gary Mitchell? Some eighty year old actor from one of your movies I should know?"

There was an actual laugh at this. "Nah. He was my pilot on Orion 10."

"Wasn't that like three years ago? Why would they be interviewing him now?"

It was hard to tell in the dark, but the look Jim flashed his way told Leo that the other man could name, down to the minute, how long ago he'd stepped off his last space shuttle. It was brief, though, the look, and quickly replaced by a mask of forced cheer. "Yeah, but this is about the mission going up in late January – he's commanding it, the ass. Oh, don't get me wrong, he's not that bad of a guy, for a Navy man, but..." Jim sighed and clicked the TV off. Only the shifting of bedsprings told him that Jim was burrowing further under the covers and not doing something psycho like going down to the hanger and running sims until morning, as he had learned Jim would sometimes do after Leo went to bed. "It's not like I can't find the clips online later. Night Bones."

* * *

"The clock is running," Pike almost sighed, relief evident in his voice. This was their fifth sim of the day and the previous four had all ended in pre-launch aborts. Such practice was important, Leo was sure, or, rather, had been assured, but tedious. Still, according to Spock (an Middle Eastern man whose real name no one seemed able to pronounce and who had a stick so far up his ass it was surprising he didn't choke on it), the computer was set to run the simulations randomly, and, "...such series of seeming coincidence are natural and expected occurrences in a truly random scenario." After comments such as that one, Leo thought he might just hate Spock. Just a little bit.

That was when the simulator started shaking.

"Don't worry, Bones," Jim called back, looking smugly over his shoulder. "I turned the hydraulics on just for you."

He decided he hated James T. Kirk just a little bit more.

"We have lift off," came the voice of the CAPCOM in Bozeman – not Christine Chapel this time, but a girl by the name of Janice Rand who couldn't be out of high school yet.

"About damn time," Jim enthused from the other end of the front row of seats. There were four rows of seats in the shuttle simulator, which was called the CCT for reasons Leo couldn't be bothered to ask about: three in front, two behind, and then two set along each of the side walls, the rear-most of which could be folded into the floor, to better access the side hatches. Jim had the right-hand seat in the front row, as he was the flight engineer, whatever the hell that meant (not to mention Leo had been fairly certain that Jim had been pilot, not an engineer, but what the fuck did he know about flying, except for the fact he'd rather not), while Leo was tucked into one of those folding seats on the left-hand side, with very little to do besides monitor his companions' (inactivated) bio-sensors and watch Uhura plug away at the communications panel in front of him. "Bozeman, we've cleared the tower."

He could hear Sulu, the pilot, talking into his own headset, "Altitude... fifteen thousand feet and counting... Mach point eight... point nine," and elbowing Jim, who had the seat to his right, pointedly. Leo liked Sulu. He seemed like he might actually be the only sane one in the bunch. Even if he planned on flying to the Moon.

"And there's Mach one, going through twenty thousand."

"Thirty-five thousand and Mach one point five."

"The air-" Pike began, when suddenly a large, square button lit up on the dash in front of him and an obnoxious buzzing noise filled the simulator. "We've got a master alarm."

"Fuel pressure falling," Jim announced, far from laughing as he had been moments earlier, as the jostling grew worse.

As the CCT seemed to lurch to one side, "We're already at ten gees," Sulu managed before all movement suddenly stopped and a red light clicked on overhead. "And we're dead."

Holding up a finger, Jim corrected, "No, we're just unconscious..." He was looking rather studiously at his watch and, after about half-a-minute added, "_Now_ we're dead... our simulated ashes spread throughout the Dakotas, if I guess right. But seriously, Spock," he glared at the man, who had the left-hand seat in the second row, allowing Leo a good view of his roommate's rather unwarranted anger as the sim slowly shifted into its normal position. "O-ring failure? It's a July launch. Even in Montana it won't get anywhere near cold enough to damage the seals." He didn't wait for an answer and slipped out of the sim.

Everyone was quiet for a long moment before Pike offered, "He has a point there, Spock," as he unstrapped himself from his harness.

"It remains a possibility, however remote. There are several simulations that end in early launch failure; I am curious as to how he arrived at his conclusion as to the source of the malfunction."

Janice, who was still plugged into their comms, broke in then. "It was LS-238... I've the key here, Mr. Spock, and it says it's the _Challenger_ mock-up."

A look that might almost have been an emotion crossed Spock's face for an instant. But only for a moment. Whatever his deal, though, it wasn't enough for him to admit his fault. No, all he did was ask, "How he was able to ascertain such with so little data?" as if that mattered then.

Uhura sighed then, "Like you wouldn't know everything there was to know about every space disaster in history if you were in his position," stretching as she stood. "Anyone else up for lunch? Dying always makes me hungry."

The others had agreed and gone upstairs, presumably to piece together lunch from leftovers from half-a-dozen different take-out places in Iowa City, but Leo found death, even fake death, tended to diminish his appetite.

It was the first free moment he'd had in, well, almost since he'd been kidnapped. He'd scarcely been left alone without tests to run or results to examine since the moment he'd been kidnapped by these people. Leo supposed this was to keep him from letting anyone know what they were up to, though they'd given him a computer and a cheap disposable phone after his late night, Boston-induced run-in with Jim, should he want to call or email someone. He was far from certain that they were bugged, but, even if they weren't, there was no one he wanted to talk to. Jocelynn had left him, both his parents were dead, and what friends he'd left back in Athens had become rather less friendly after the noise that had Senator Richardson had created after his son's death...

Anyone who'd done even the most cursory of research knew that glioblastoma was a particularly malignant form of brain cancer. Though Leo's research was still largely experimental, the aggressive combination of surgery, radiotherapy, and medication he'd developed seemed to improve chances of a patient survival to the point where three out of every four patients he'd operated on had lived or were expected to live at least twelve months after surgery, with half of those living another two years.

If they survived the operation, that was, and if their tumour grade III or below.

Bryan Richardson's had been a grade IV. It didn't matter that he was an otherwise healthy thirty-three-year-old man, that he was one of the most respected defence attorneys in the state, or that his father had been one of Georgia's senators for longer than anyone could honestly remember, tumours were indiscriminate. So what if his family had been Athens' answer to the Kennedys for the last thirty years? Bryan had known the risks going into surgery. He had chosen to take them. His father should have understood that.

Anyway, how the hell was Leo supposed to have known that Bryan would get through surgery just fine, only to die of a post-op infection three days later? He was a doctor, dammit, and sometimes there was nothing he could do regardless of how hard he tried. Besides, there'd been dozens of doctors, interns, nurses, and the like attached to the case. How an infection made Bryan's death his fault and his fault alone was beyond Leo's grasp... Especially when there had been others far more responsible for his post-op care.

Almost without thinking about it, Leo reached over to the computer and booted it up. Within seconds – thoughtless seconds, in which the only thing that remained was the anger and the betrayal and the sadness he had been able to set aside since being brought to this strange place – he had pulled up his old work email account.

There were over a hundred messages. Most of them were from Geoffrey M'Benga, a cardiothoracic surgeon he'd often had lunch with. Most of these were links to articles about Richardson's death, though those had gotten fewer as time wore on. A number of them, however, verged on the frantic, asking where he was, what he thought he was doing leaving in the middle of the night like that, and if he was still alive. Before he could think better of it, he sent back a quick reply to the latest of these – _I'm fine. Up north. Found a new job. Don't worry about me, Leo _– and deleted the rest. He didn't need to know what they were saying about him in the news. Leo knew the truth. That was all that mattered.

Sill, it pissed him off to no end. Almost enough to make him forget that someone here at Aquarian was likely to read his message, combing it for hidden meaning, before it ever got to M'Benga. Almost.

Leo glared at the computer for a moment, wishing he knew where they kept the alcohol in this place. He'd have to ask Jim...

Jim. What the fuck was up with him, first with his sudden consideration for other people's sleep patterns last night and now with this rather odd burst of anger over a seemingly innocent computer program? He'd not known the man for long, but it was enough to know that this behaviour was rather off. The only thing he could think of, though, that was out of the ordinary was that his astronaut friend had been on TV last night... Now that he thought about it, Jim had once said something about the ugly side of the media...

In seconds, he'd found the episode of _The Tonight Show with Adam Garrison _in question and, before he could think better of it, Leo pulled up the video of the interview and pressed play.

_"-for Captain Gary Mitchell_," the announcer said over the applause, and the video shows a not unattractive man walking onto a stage and shaking hands with the host before settling onto a couch set up in front of a fake skyline. Given that one of them was in full naval uniform and the other wearing a suit in a shade of yellow Leo was fairly certain has been outlawed since the seventies, the scene couldn't look more bizarre if it tried.

"_Alright_!" said the host, gesturing toward the crowd, "_Settle down people. We've got a real live military man with us today, so that means best behaviour..."_ there was some inane banter for a while, and then, "_So, you're going to be commanding the Orion 15 mission_?"

"_Yeah_," Mitchell said. He was slouching a bit on the couch, looking relaxed in a way that somehow jarred terribly with the uniform he was wearing, at least in Leo's mind. He'd volunteered a lot of time to the VA hospital after Dad got sick and had met a lot of servicemen who'd done tours in Chechnya and Azerbaijan there. All of them seemed to exude a hardness, no, an awareness of their surroundings that came off as a hardness. They'd all been neat, clean, orderly in a way that implied that to be anything other was dangerous, subversive. Mitchell looked more like a man sitting down for a causal conversation, which he was, but he was also a sailor talking about the ship he was to command, and that required a level of competence that somehow failed to come across in the video.

_"Now, if I've got this right, you were the pilot on Orion 7 and Orion 10 – how does it feel to be in command of your first mission? Anxious? Proud? A little sad maybe?" _

_"Proud, mostly. I've worked and trained side by side with some excellent men and women for this mission – for all my missions – and I can't think of anything more I'd rather be doing than going into space and doing what I've been trained to do. Of course, there's always butterflies before you go on any mission, be it for NASA or the Navy, but, once you get in your ship? You just get in this zone and there's no place left for fear... but sad? No."_

"Well, I just ask that because, well, this mission is just a routine docking with the International Space Station, correct?"

"Routine? Hardly. We'll be docking with the ISS to continue decommissioning the station-"

"Yes, but let's see here... my notes have it as the Orion 8, 9, 11, and 13 mission objectives were exactly the same: decommission the space station after the terrible Triple Six disaster that cost American astronauts Clark Terrell, Robert Tomlinson, and J. M. Colt and Russian cosmonaut Matryona Entin their lives and damaged the ISS beyond repair. What makes this mission any different than those four, or those that will be needed afterwards to complete the deconstruction?"

There was a tightening to Mitchell's lips, but otherwise the man remained unchanged. _"A number of things – for instance, the _Rassvet _and_ Nauka _modules had to be deactivated after Orion 13 do to damage, so our shuttle will have to remain in synchronous orbit with the station at very close range to allow my crew-"_

_"Yes, your crew. Isn't it true that these ISS missions have become so routine that two of your crewmembers have already done taken part in the decommissioning on previous missions – Dr. Elizabeth Dehner during Orion 9 and Lieutenant Commander Edith Keeler on Orion 11?"_

_"Elizabeth and Edith are veterans of the space program, yes, but-" _

_"Still, Captain Mitchell, I think it's kinda sad. You're a good man – you were on the show after Orion 10, the first manned mission to the moon in almost fifty-three years; you served on Orion 7 with Colonel Edward Leslie, who went on to captain the Orion 12 mission to the moon. I reminds me of something your friend Jim Kirk said on his last visit to the show – Johnny? You have the clip?"_

The video clip in question quickly appeared. The set's the same, though it's been given a false black-and-white treatment, and instead of Mitchell on the couch, there's Jim. His hair's a little longer than it is now and he's wearing a suit, but it's still clearly Jim. There date in the bottom corner reads_ 1 December, 2026._

_"So, why did you really retire, Jim?" _

With a laugh that didn't reach his eyes, _"Irreconcilable differences."_

_"You make it sound like a divorce, and an amicable one at that. From what I've seen in the papers, especially the tabloids, it was anything but." _

_"Well, it kinda goes like this, Adam: after the accident on the ISS, the administration wanted to play it safe. Now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing – hell, mission control erring on the side of caution has probably saved more lives than you or I will ever know – but there's a difference between playing it safe and giving up._

_"The Moon missions were only ever a PR stunt to paper over the blow the so-called 'Triple Six' disaster gave to the Administration – the Deputy said as much when he approached me for Orion 10. The paper pushers wanted the station dismantled and NASA's research to go back to unmanned probes until they could make it 'safe' for man to go back to space. They talked about sending men to orbit the moon like it was a chore, not one of humanity's greatest achievements. _

_"Mankind used to look up at the stars in wonder but, now that we can get there, no one wants to go. And that's why I was forced out-"_

The clip showing Jim's interview ended then, returning to the video of Gary Mitchell from last night, but Leo found himself closing the browser before the captain could form a response, face burning. If Jim had seen the video already, that would definitely explain his mood. Probably. He wasn't familiar with the details of Jim's leaving NASA (though he suspected he could find all the details he ever wanted with one quick online search, if the video clip was any indication) or his coming to Aquarian, but he'd heard enough to know they hadn't been pretty. Somewhere in the episode Mitchell must have said something... Or it could have just been the reminder of all that he'd lost. Hell knew Leo felt the same way after seeing the links M'Benga had sent him...

Still, it was troubling, and he was trying to figure out what the hell to do about it when the man of the hour himself poked his head in. No longer in his absurdly retro flight suit, he was wearing a pair of jeans and a worn t-shirt with the number 42 emblazoned across the front. Tossing his bomber jacket and a set of keys into a nearby chair, Jim walked straight up to his desk and rapping it twice, announced, "Bones, my man, how do you feel about a road trip?"

"Forgive me if I don't jump for joy, but my last _road trip _ended with me being blindfolded, drugged, and carted here against my will."

"No blindfolds, I promise," he held up his hand in a decent imitation of a scout salute, made less so by the accompanying waggle of his eyebrows, "unless you're into that sort of thing. But definitely no drugs. 'Sides, Pike apologized for that already. Profusely. Look at all the shiny medical equipment he bought for you; that's like, I dunno, half-a-mil in _I'm sorrys _right there. Still say you should have asked for a pony. Or maybe Tobago. Good surf there. And rum... gives you less of a headache than the tequila, or, at least, that's what I've noticed. I could be wrong. You're the doctor, you tell me.

"But later. Chicago calls." He tapped the desk again perfunctorily.

Leo blinked at him. "Chicago? Isn't that like... four hours away?" He wasn't exactly sure where in Iowa they were, only that it was a town named Riverside, which had a population of about nil plus them, and that it was somewhere close to Iowa City.

"_If_ we drive the speed limit."

"Oh yes, silly me, whyever would anyone want to do that?"

Jim seemed to miss the sarcasm. "Now you're getting it Bones. Come on."

* * *

**Friday, 8 December, 2028** (L-222 days)

The universe, Leo decided hated him. That could, honestly, be the only explanation.

Oh, don't get him wrong, the bar wasn't so bad. It was dark and moodily lit and the music wasn't all that terrible, even if it was a little more main-stream than anything he'd have frequented of his own accord, it was just the situation that had brought him here.

Because, of course, Jim wanted to carouse in Chicago after the unpleasantness that had been Wednesday morning. And, since the universe hated him as it did, it had naturally seen fit to have him drag Leo along with him. Which wouldn't have been so bad except this was _James T. Kirk _they were talking about, and his idea of carousing was far from what most, normal, people would have considered carrying on.

Wednesday had involved a four-hour drive made in just over half that time, a tailor's shop where all the price tags were in excess of four digits but the alcohol was free, and an apartment on the eighty-seventh floor of the Trump Tower. Apparently it belonged to the two main stockholders in the whole send-people-to-the-Moon business, the Colonels Tucker, both of whom were now retired and spent most the year in France. Leo had tried to ask about why they were here (in Chicago in general and the stockholders' apartment specifically), how long they might be staying, or, really, anything about the situation at all, but Jim had refused to answer any of his questions. Well, he'd told him that one of the Colonels Tucker was a southern man, explaining the presence of decent whiskey this far north of the Mason-Dixon in the rather well-stocked wet bar, but nothing pertinent to their situation. Instead he'd pulled out a stack of movies and, holding up a few, had asked solemnly, "Blue aliens, green ones, or sort of squishy grey ones?"

Leo had pinched the bridge of his nose and stalked back to the wet bar.

And, as if Wednesday hadn't been bad enough, Thursday had involved Jim dragging him to this place on Lake Michigan. "Come on, Bones. It'll be fun. And I promise to make it worth your while," he'd said, delivering him into the hands the hands of a very blonde, very Australian scuba diving instructor who looked like she couldn't have been a day over twenty.

Then Jim had gone and done it again this morning. He'd promised that today's class would be the last he had to go to, and that tomorrow they'd go out and do something fun, but, as previously noted, Jim's ideas of fun were a little off-kilter.

He'd also promised food and booze, and so far the brat hadn't returned with either. Leo was about to start looking for the man when he slid into the seat across from him. He handed over a glass of bourbon, keeping something neon yellow and fruit-garnished for himself.

Jim, catching his disgusted glance, grinned madly at him. "If I'm going to have a drink, I'm damn well going to enjoy it," he said, taking a sip and making a strange face. "No idea what this is. Told the bartender to make me whatever that chick in the corner," he jerked his head in the proper direction. Leo didn't look, "was having." He took another sip. "It's not _bad_, it's just different. Reminds me of yellow Gatorade, only sort of orange-lime. Weird." He took a larger drink. "I also ordered us the sashimi platter. No idea what it is, but the bartender said it has a bit of everything, so I figure it should have something that we like. Usually," he said more confidentially, "whenever we come here, we end up down the hall, at the restaurant. Then again, usually when we come here, it's to hob-nob with the stockholders.

"Now, don't get me wrong, the Tuckers, who own the apartment, are wonderful people. He's this mechanical genius and owns one of the largest manufacturing businesses in like the universe, but you'd never know it talking to Trip – that's Charles Tucker. Friendliest guy you ever met. And she's – well, I don't know the right word for what _she_ is, but she's kinda like Spock. Think it comes from being a _Kalimi _in Iran during that mess over there. Real interesting character, though; was in the Israeli military for a while, then came over to ours, and after she retired she founded Durandal – the private security company. You should see the way they argue sometimes too...

"But, yeah, they're more of old-school sit-down dinners with wine and dessert courses. And I hate coming to hotel bars alone. Sitting alone in a hotel bar is like... I dunno, asking for the person who will inevitably try and join you to be a hooker or a serial killer or something."

Jim took another sip of his drink and made another face. "And it's not that I don't _like_ this, it's just... strange. Like someone tried to make a margarita and used sugar. And orange." It was at this point he realized Leo was staring rather mulishly at him from across the table, drink untouched. "Something wrong with your drink? I thought you were a bourbon man Bones, but they've all kinds of stuff back there. Or, if you want something stronger, we can get them to box up the sushi and can see what else the Tuckers have in their liquor cabinet. No," he said suddenly, "wait. It's the sushi isn't it? At least, I _think_ sashimi is some kind of sushi. We can-"

"Do you always talk this much or is it just around me? 'Cause, I swear, if you go on like this all the time, it's got to be a small wonder no one's killed you yet."

"Who's to say that no one's tried?"

Leo snorted, hiding a smirk behind his glass. It really was pretty excellent bourbon, and he was, to his surprise, actually having a decent time, even if Jim was acting stranger than usual. "They must have been saints, the guys forced to go up into space with you."

"Nah," Jim said with a laugh that seemed almost too wide, too jovial – but only almost. "They were a practical lot. Most of them were fighter pilots before being drafted into the astronaut service, and it takes a cool head to do that type of thing. Which isn't of course to say that most of them wouldn't have hog-tied me and pushed me out an air lock if they'd had to fly with me twice. I'm pretty sure Gary... Well, suffice to say none of them ever had to go up with me twice."

He went noticeably silent after that, barely even glancing at the waitress who brought them their food, despite the fact she was rather noticeably attempting to attract Jim's attention (if the number of buttons undone on her blouse or the way she kept leaning in his direction was any indication). Despite the fact that Jim was, on the whole, a rather annoying person and that anyone who spent more than five minutes with him would surely be glad if he went quiet for the rest of the evening, a silent Jim just seemed wrong to Leo.

It was an extension of the whole business of _The Tonight Show _interview, and it was really starting to worry Leo.

Before he could say anything though, Jim had picked up his chopsticks and was poking at their food. "I think it's fish. Raw fish. Hmmmm... wasn't expecting that. Well, I kinda was, but I was expecting it to all wrapped up in rice and green stuff. Weird. Wonder what kind of fish it is. Though that," he poked at one particular piece with some vigour, "looks like octopus. At least, I think it's octopus. That's not the one that kills you if it's prepared wrong, is it?" He popped the slice of probably-octopus into his moth looked at Leo expectantly as he chewed.

Feeling somewhat drawn into a play he neither understood nor could escape, he was only able to say, "I'm pretty sure that's puffer fish," before Jim swallowed and carried on his with his commentary.

"Good. 'Cause that'd be an embarrassing way to go. I fully intend to be the first man to die of old age in space – set another world record and all."

"I'm pretty sure Pike'll get that one, kid."

"Yeah. Oh well... And, just in case you were wondering, orange-lime-Gatorade-margarita things and octopus just _don't_ work together. What do you say we get out of here? We can go upstairs, order a pizza, drink the Tuckers' alcohol, and watch crappy movies – 'cause, I don't know about you Bones, but I've decided I'm definitely not a sushi person. Or raw fish person. Whatever the hell you call it. Lesson learned."

"Depends – you going to tell me what the fuck is going on with you? Or am I just going to be dropped off for more scuba lessons or whatnot while you try to get your head screwed back on and we can get back to-" Leo paused for a moment, unsure of what to call Aquarian Aerospace and their mad space venture in public.

"It's no big deal. I promise we'll head back to Riverside tomorrow. I'll catch you up on what you missed, no problem. 'Sides, you needed to learn how to dive anyway. And I promise I won't drag you along next time I need to take off-"

"Dammit Jim," he said as ardently as he could without drawing looks from nearby diners, "I'm not saying that, I'm just saying you're my friend, though God knows why, and friends generally tell each other things. Like what's bothering them enough to make them drop everything and drive a couple hundred miles to crash in someone else's apartment."

Jim frowned, but pulled his wallet out of his pants' pocket (he's wearing an honest-to-God suit today; it's asparagus green and the shirt underneath eggplant purple. It looks absolutely ridiculous, but it's one hundred percent genuine Jim, and not like the pod-Jim that's been walking around for the last couple of days, so Leo didn't do anything more than raise and eyebrow when he'd seen the getup) and dropped a hundred dollar bill on the table, reverting back to that strangely quiet version of Jim he was beginning to hate. Only once back the Tuckers' apartment, pizza ordered and a fruity drink of his own making in hand, did he say anything else.

"It was Gary's interview."

"I kind of figured that," Leo snorted, sinking onto one of the couches in the family room with his own glass (of bourbon, thank you very much).

He was taken aback by the hard look Jim gave him after that. His eyes, always so impossibly blue, seemed like ice and hurt to look at. This whole anxious, sullen Jim hurt to look at."You see it?"

"I turned it off after the clip they showed of your interview."

Jim exhaled loudly. "Yeah. You missed the good bit then. He kinda tried to insinuate that my ideas on NASA and it's future are skewed, 'cause of Dad and all. And maybe they are, but the way he said it... it was like he was trying to suggest I was crazy or something... I know I shouldn't take it personally, but Gary was a friend and probably only saying what the PAOs told him to say, but still...

"And then to have the _Challenger_ simulation right after hearing that? Just couldn't take it, I guess. Usually I just run up to Iowa City and hit the bars there when shit like that happens, but I figured you needed to learn to dive anyway and we could use the time to get to know each other better. Get you out of the inn, at least, and give you an chance to leave if you wanted to...

"I dunno. I'm just fucked up I guess," he sighed, sinking onto the couch next to Leo, his whole body seeming to collapse in on itself. "Sorry you've had to deal with it."

"Like you haven't had to deal with my shit?"

He gave a tired laugh, closing his eyes and leaning a head on Leo's shoulder tiredly. "I guess that's right. We're a pair, aren't we?"

"I guess so... Just one question."

"Yeah?" Jim opened one bleary blue eye.

"What's your Dad got to do with any of it?"

"He was an astronaut. He died in the _Columbia_ disaster."

* * *

a/n: So, yeah, I know it's been a while. Wanted to get this out last week... but internet problems kept that from happening. (And last week because Jan 27 was the aniversary of the Apollo 1 disaster, Jan 28 the _Challenger_ disaster, and Feb 1 the _Columbia _disaster. Bad week for spaceflight.)

So, yeah, an insane about of research went into this, and if you caught all the ST references in this, applause to you. Let's see... Garrison is the comm officer from Pike's time on _Enterprise_ in "The Menagerie," Jance was Kirk's yeoman, Clark Terrell was the captain of the _Excelsior_ in wrath of Khan, Robert Tomlinson was the wepons officer who died on his wedding day in "Balance of Terror," J. M. Colt was Pike's yeoman in "The Menagerie," Dr. Elizabeth Dehner was in "Where No Man Has Gone Before," and Edith Keeler was in "City on the Edge of Forever." I think that's everyone. Nope, Geoffrey M'Benga is a doctor in a couple of different episodes of TOS. Charles "Trip" Tucker and T'Pol were the engineer and first officer respectively from ENT (I really couldn't help myself). _That's _everyone.

Which I suppose brings us into the whole "Triple Six" disaster mentioned in the interviews. You'll get more next installment, but basically there was a structural failure in one of the ISS's modules during Expidition 66 (which, yes, would be about what number we'd be up to in September 2024, if we keep sending people to the ISS about 2.7x a year) while the space shuttle _Constitution_ was docked there during the Orion 6 mission. It's been the big reason NASA and Congress are pushing to cancel future spaceflight plans. All trips to the ISS since (Orion 8, 9, 11, 13) have been to decommission the station. Orion 15 will continue this.

What else am I missing? Oh, yes, Richard Husband was the real commander of STS-107, ie the final flight of _Columbia. _Hopefully he and his estate don't mind me morphing him into George Kirk here, as it was done with complete respect. Hopefully he was even a Star Trek fan. As the NX-02 in ENT was named _Columbia_ in honour of the former, I can only assume so... Which reminds me: the "...for a Navy man..." comment Jim makes is also meant with complete respect. All my research into NASA shows a friendly rivalry between the Navy pilots and the Air Force ones. In _From the Earth to the Moon_ episode "1968", Borman (an Air Force man, played by the same actor who plays Trip & T'Pol's son Lorian in ENT's "E2") makes a similar comment about Lovell (a Navy pilot).

As always, questions, comments, queries, consultations, and reveiws are appreciated. -aadarshinah


	4. flesh and blood

_"In ancient days, men looked to the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations._  
_In modern days, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood."_  
Richard Nixon in a speech prepared in the event of Apollo 11's failure

* * *

Kirks, everybody knew, died in fiery, effervescent bursts of brilliance – human supernovas, momentarily bright, capturing the world's interest, and quickly forgotten. That and that reason alone was how Jim had known that he'd not die during the so-called _Triple Six _disaster. A death like that would have been cold, a three-way race to see whether they ran out of oxygen first, suffocated on the resultant carbon dioxide instead, or froze when the heating units failed.

Well, that, and he'd always known he'd die alone. But that was just a Jim thing.

* * *

**Thursday, 14 December, 2028** (L-216 days)

Jim stopped dreaming five years ago. This had used to bother him – because, when he only slept three hours a night, he'd a lot of time to worry about why he couldn't sleep – but he'd given up on worrying about it after Orion 6. He'd not wanted to sleep for a long time after that. Besides, there were some fairly decent movie channels he could fill hours with on the nights Sistine refused to run sims with him.

_"Just when you think you know something, you have to look at it in another way. Even though it may seem silly or wrong you must try."_

Movies at night, sims during the day, and a random trips to Tobago and Paris (to practice diving and visit the stockholders respectively) here and there weren't a bad way to spend his time, though. Sure, it mightn't be space, but he'd be there again soon, and, once he's up there, it won't matter that he barely sleeps, because no one can sleep for more than a few hours at a time in space. It's partially the alien environment, partially the excitement, and more than a little of the noise, but his insomnia would hardly be out of the ordinary.

Maybe he'll even be able to dream again once he's up there. God knows the only time he's felt alive have been those three missions, even Orion 6, as fucked up as that was. The others... they all got out of the astronaut business real quick, and only Ann Mulhall remained in military at all, manning a desk over in San Diego. But Jim... even if they hadn't offered him a command and even if that mission hadn't taken them to the moon, he would have stayed. Space was the only place he'd ever belonged...

_"Now, when you read,"_ the movie continued,_ "don't just consider what the author thinks. Consider what you think. Boys, you must strive to find your own voice. The longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all." _

He heard Bones' bed squeak as the man shifted underneath his pile of blankets. Jim fumbled about his own for the remote and turned the TV down father, not wanting to wake the doctor.

The doctor...

The choice to recruit Dr. McCoy had been a fairly easy one, made over six months before they'd actually pulled him out of a bar in St. Louis. There had been some debate in the beginning about whether to pick up a military or civilian doctor to be their flight surgeon, but Jim had put his foot down for McCoy. As Chief Procurement Officer for Aquarian, it was his job to research potential hires. Most the others had come on long before he'd joined up, but he'd picked out more than a few good people who had the training and dedication necessary to make this mission work. Chekov. Rand. A GUIDO and pair of FIDOs with names he could never pronounce that he just calls Cupcake, Muffin, and Strudel.

He'd have fought for any one of them, but Bones had been something of a special project, even before he'd been christened Bones. He knew the others were sceptical of choosing a neurosurgeon. Depending on the political situation and how things went at the Shackleton Base, it could be years before any other teams could join them on the Moon, let alone any other medical professionals. But Jim had done his research. They needed someone he felt with a background in surgery should the worst happen, and if that background included some dabbling in oncology and pathology, so much the better. Who knew what exactly would happen to their bodies after a year, two years, ten years in space? And when he'd found the man had psychiatry degree too...

Well, McCoy was the perfect candidate for the job; the only reason they'd not recruited him sooner was because, by the time they'd settled on Bones, he'd just taken Bryan Richardson on as a patient and they dared not touch him. Not while he was involved, however peripherally, with the Georgian senator. Robert Richardson was just too close to Boian Ayel, who in turn was a bosom buddy of Sigismondo Lombardi and, well, they hadn't nicknamed the head of Romulus and Sons' Nero for nothing.

Pike and Jim had figured that, as soon as Bryan's surgery was over, they'd be able to pull their normal recruiting spiel on McCoy. Aquarian Aeronautics, after all, was a real company (a subsidiary of the Tucker Manufacturing empire that did a lot of concept work on supersonic aircraft for the government), and really did need doctors to make sure that the things they designed wouldn't kill anyone. Usually they pulled the mark in for an interview and, if things looked promising, dosed them with truth serum to make sure they weren't government spies, and then, if they checked out, offered them a place in Aquarian or one of its sister companies.

Bryan Richardson's unexpected death and the four-month media free-for-all that followed had put a distinct crimp in their plans, however. Approaching McCoy openly would have led to too many eyes on Aquarian. If he hadn't left Athens when he did, if they hadn't managed to track him down in St. Louis, time constraints would have forced them to go with another flight surgeon. Jim hadn't liked many of the other choices, not after seeing Bones' CV (and especially not after seeing the good doctor on TV, but that was something he had most assuredly not mentioned in his official dossier), and neither had Pike. The closest they'd come to an alternative was Sistine, but she'd (vocally) preferred to remain where she was – something about finishing medical school now that she'd an actual way to pay for it...

_"Thoreau said most mean lead lives of quiet desperation, don't be resigned to that. Break out."_

The bedsprings groaned again.

Jim turned off the TV.

"Go back to sleep, Bones," he whispered. "At least one of us should get some rest."

* * *

**Friday, 6 September, 2024** (T+ 100:35:10)

"You're supposed to be sleeping Major."

"Ann, love, darling, light of my life, how many times have I told you to call me Jim?"

Almost serenely as she slid into the couch to his right, "If I didn't know any better, Major Kirk, I'd think you _wanted _to see how long it would take your balls to drop in zero-g." The threat, "Because that's where they'll end up if you try flirting with me one more time," remained unsaid.

"In the name of science, Commander Mulhall? Anything."

Her laugh was like bells, and it was for that reason and that reason alone he kept flirting with her. Ann was over twice his age and rather happily married (not that would normally have stopped him anyway), but she had always seemed too serious to him when they were training – in a very kick-ass sort of way – and never laughed. She'd scarcely even smiled. Jim had decided it was his job, as pilot and second-in-command, to remedy this. That, plus the fact that Piper and Terrell's chains weren't half as fun to yank.

"We'll have to find time to work it into the experiments then," she said when her laugher finally subsided, pulling out a check-list from her polo pocket and proceeding to record the enviro and nav readings. As far as Jim had been able to discern, she did this once or twice a day solely for her own benefit. It was weird, but, then again, that was Ann for you.

He turned away from the commander, back towards the windows and the view of the Earth spinning beneath them. The Pacific was currently spread out beneath them... and, beyond, the blackness of space. It was impossible for him to turn away for long. Even if Orion 3 hadn't permanently fucked up his sleep patterns, he'd not have been able to sleep. Not with this view.

"I'd have thought you'd be on the station," Ann said a few moments later, her notations complete and check-list back in her pocket. "The Cupola, after all, has a better view."

"Yeah, but apparently J. M. and the Russian woman, Matryona, have set up their camp in _Tranquillity_... I offered to join them-"

"Naturally."

Jim ignored the barb, "-but they said something about it being an all-girls module or something else ridiculous and straight out of high school. They'd probably make an exception for you though, seeing as your balls are all metaphorical, if you wanted. I got a glance before they shut me down – it's once hell of a view."

"As I plan to sleep, not sightsee, I think I'll be fine right where I am... Though I probably won't be turning in for a while yet."

"Just coming up to check on me?"

"You are the youngest on the mission. Hell, you're barely older than my son."

"It's my second spaceflight, Ann. I think I know what I'm doing."

"What can I say? The maternal instinct dies hard..." and it was only because Ann really thought that, not that he was far too young for his rank or job, that he didn't push the subject. God knew it pissed off more than a few of his contemporaries on the ground. "If you really can't sleep, Captain Decker came over with Mayor Kotko. We were planning on discussing some things for tomorrow's EVA while-"

And then the shuttle shuddered.

It was quieter, gentler than the teeth-jarring quakes of take-off, almost completely unnoticeable over the hum of the equipment working to keep the them alive in this most inhospitable of places. It was almost unnoteworthy, except for the fact that it had caused nearly every warning light on the console in front of Jim to light up instantaneously.

Then there was a deep, metallic groan, and all the warning lights cut out._ (This was, it would turn out, only natural, because all the electricity on the ship had suddenly quit, leaving the shuttle powerless. It would take them almost two hours to get the back-ups online and another day to realize that, even then, things were much, much worse than any of them could ever have imagined.)_

* * *

**Thursday, 14 December, 2028** (L-216 days)

He gave up trying to sleep after an hour or so and, dressing quietly, had ended up where he usually did on mornings like these when the cable was out or there weren't any decent movies on: in Pike's office, curled up on the couch in there (having learned long ago better than to touch the chair), with his nose in a book.

At first it had amused him that, in this age of electronic readers and mini computers, Pike had felt the need to fill his office with paper books. Only after borrowing one did he understand... the feel of the paper, the smell of the glue... things far more real than the zeros and ones that made up digital copies of the same books. The digital could be erased, after all, but books, real, physical books, they were forever. And Jim liked that. Even if some of the newer readers reminded him of something straight out of a science-fiction (and there was nothing quite like reading a SyFy novel on an ultra-modern reader).

Many things about Pike amused Jim, though, if pressed, he'd be hard put to say why. Key among them being that, for all he knew, logically, that Pike was a war hero and had flown in nearly major operation in the Middle East from Enduring Freedom to Zulfiqar, Jim could not for the life of him imagine the man actually being in the military. He didn't honestly know why, but figured it had something to do with the fact he honestly liked Pike whereas he'd found the vast majority of his contemporaries insufferable idiots who were only officers by virtue of a diploma and not any degree of skill on their parts.

Then again, he and Pike had had very different careers in the military.

Sure, Jim had flown A-10s and B-2s and T-42s in the Caucasus, but after less than two years of that NASA had picked it's first new class of astronauts since 2009 – _The Lucky Thirteen _they'd called themselves. After that, it'd all been survival training and simulators and an advanced degree in aeroscience to go with the distance one he'd gotten while overseas. His promotions had come with each successful mission: he'd made major after Orion 3, lieutenant colonel after the mess of Orion 6, and, while in orbit of the Moon, the president had made him colonel. He'd been in the Air Force for six years. It was a precipitous rise and, had things not gone sour, might've had him wearing stars before his twenty-fifth birthday. Either way, it had sure as hell hadn't made him many friends outside the astronaut service. But that was okay because, for those last four years, the astronaut service had been his life. His family. What other people thought hadn't mattered. Until, well, it had, and he'd been cashiered out faster than you could say _government cover-up. _

Pike though, his service had been different. He'd flown everything there was to fly everywhere there was to fly it, doing so long after most men had moved on to desk jockeying. He was in the Air Force for eighteen years, only retiring when they threatened to promote him further. And if his own progress through the ranks had been on the rapid side, no one had much minded, as it was more than obvious to even his detractors that Pike deserved it. Jim had even heard it said that, had the country been fighting a real war while Pike was in service, he would have been the Air Force's answer to Daniel Daly, but, deprived by circumstance alone, he'd managed to come out of nearly two decades of service without a Medal of Honour. This wasn't to say that Pike was _looking _to be martyred, but he was the type of man who, in another day and age, would have held his position with intrepidity far beyond the call of duty, even if it had meant his own death, and would have succeeded in encouraging whatever men he'd with him to do the same.

Perhaps the reason then that Jim couldn't picture Pike in the Air Force was because they'd served in two fundamentally different militaries, and Pike's was the real one.

That being said, it had always amused him that the Stockholders had chosen Pike to head up their plan to clandestinely send people to the Moon, again, for no particular reason, only that, at first glance, he didn't seem like the type to head up an underground movement. But no, apparently Trip – which was to say Charles Tucker the Third, the man who'd taken his father's modest manufacturing business and turned it into a Fortune 500 company within seven years of taking charge, and who'd been on the Board of Trustees for both Lockheed Martin and Thales Alenia long before he made his first million on the sole basis of his engineering expertise – had insisted that Pike head up Aquarian. Together they'd enticed Scotty away from some experimental hypersonic plane design at Northrop Grumman. T'Pol – which was to say Tal al-Polana, Trip's wife and founder of Durandal Security Services, who could probably kill a person seven different ways with the contents of her pockets alone if she wanted to and, luckily, rarely did, being rather of the opinion that _violence was the last refuge of the incompetent _– had added Spock to the mix, and together they, along with Richard Barnett of Starr Industries and a couple of others, had started the companies that would serve as cover for their Moon mission.

Jim was sure that they had had perfectly good – and, if he knew T'Pol at all, logical – reasons for choosing who they did, but the idea of Pike, Scotty, and Spock sitting around a table in a Boston café trying to figure out how to build a base on the Moon without the government noticing just gave him laughing fits.

But maybe that was just the lack of sleep.

* * *

**Friday, 6 September, 2024** (T+ 105:05:22)

Mark glanced at his watch. The shuttle _Constitution's _mid-bridge was barely lit and, in the dim twilight, the glowing LCD face was like a flare. "It's just after nine universal standard. That makes it what? Three in Houston? They've got to have realized something's gone wrong by now."

Half-buried inside a panel at the other end of the cabin, _Mayor _Kotko laughed. At least, that's what it was supposed to have been. Instead, it came out as a hacking cough. The others pretended not to notice it, all of them but Mark, their flight surgeon, but he knew as well as the rest of them that Alexis wouldn't – couldn't – be pulled from his repairs, no matter how sick he might or might not be. None of them knew why the shuttle's back-up systems hadn't come on automatically when the mains failed or why the mains had failed in the first place_ (Later, they would realize this was because their mains had been tied into the station when they'd docked twelve hours earlier. When the station had lost power, the umbilical had drawn out every last kilowatt hour from the shuttle, trying futility to keep the ISS's systems going. It had happened so fast, the computer had never had time to switch to auxiliaries...), _only that, whatever the reason, they were running on auxiliaries now. Alexis, the station's engineer, was still working on fixing them. Their own, Clark Terrell, had been on the ISS...

"_Da_," Alexis said when the fit passed, "but the computers, including the comms, are still down. If they're sending us anything, we're not receiving. I'm still not reading anything from the station either."

Decker frowned. "Matryona would have sent something by now if she could."

"Lieutenant Terrell is not as familiar with the station's systems as _Mayor _Kotko," Ann reminded him, trying to be reasonable. They were doing everything in their power to get the shuttle operational,_ id est_, waiting for Alexis to get the computer up and running so they could try to analyse the data and figure out what had happened. "If the same thing that happened to us happened to them, it may take them longer to repair their systems."

They went back and forth like this for a while, Ann Mulhall and Will Decker. The frantic rush to get power back was over. The frantic rush to to solve whatever had gone wrong couldn't begin until Alexis had the computers back online. They couldn't talk to Houston, the Russians in Korolyov, or even the station right next door. All in all, it created a feeling of impotence that Jim was doing his best to avoid by hanging out in the cockpit and sending the occasional sympathetic glance down to Mark, who was the only person Jim could see well without craning his head.

It seemed like ages, but eventually Alexis got the computers back online _(the power drain that had killed their mains had fused several circuits in what would come to be discovered as a fatal design flaw in the Orion orbiters. It became part of the reason Congress wanted to shut the missions down and, if they'd planned on building new ones, Jim would have agreed wholeheartedly. Nevertheless, it was amazing that Alexis was able to fix the shuttle at all, let alone make it flight-worthy.) _And then it was a frenzy of activity as everyone was trying to figure out what the hell had happened, how to fix it, and, better still, if the station could help _(but, of course, they couldn't. The sealing around one of the windows in the Cupola had been damaged and, stressed by the constant heating and cooling the station experienced in orbit, it soon failed. _

_(Decompression of the entire station took place in less than a minute.)_

* * *

**Thursday, 14 December, 2028** (L-216 days)

He gave up trying to read after a while and settled for staring at the ceiling. This, too, wasn't so unusual. Usually he was good at ignoring things – things about his past, mostly, that he knew damn well had fucked him over, thank you very much, and that he most certainly did _not_ plan on doing anything about, because it wouldn't do any more fucking good than a fifth of tequila and a halfway decent movie, - but, sometimes, things just hit him and he became haunted by the memories of things he could not change...

Jim did his best to ignore these memories, or laugh them off when they were brought to light. But things always got rough this time of year, for all the usual reasons. Hanukkah had started the night before. Christmas was coming up. Sam had died eight years ago today in Azerbaijan. And Gary's interview and the subsequent _Challenger _sim (and what the fuck was the point of _that_?) last week hadn't been any help at all.

And, of course, since he'd done the disappearing thing last week, so he'd not be able to get away with it again until, oh, his birthday at the earliest, so he'd have to suffer through the day sober.

It was eight months 'til launch, luckily, and there was a lot still to do. He, Pike, Scotty, Spock, and Bones were scheduled for LVT sims all morning. There was work to do in the mock-Lunar Base (which no one had come up with a good acronym for yet, so he called it _Henry _just for the twitch it almost caused Spock's left eye) in the afternoon, some muddling about with the aeroponics that they couldn't put off any longer, so it wasn't like he'd have time to think about things then. But now, waiting for morning, he had too little to distract him...

God, he wished he'd thought this far ahead last week.

Luckily, the _click-clack _of heels in the walkway distracted him before he found himself, against his will, dragged further down the line of thought that started with Sam's death and ran back five generations of Kirks who'd all just lived long enough to father sons too young to remember them.

"Uhura!" he called, jumping up from the couch and poking his head out into the hallway, "Uhura, love, darling, light of-!"

She practically hissed in frustration, the sound echoing on the concrete as she came into view at the end of the curving hall. "Kirk, look, I don't have the patience to deal with your idiocy right now." Rather than wearing her usual flight suit and sensible shoes, she was in this blood red sweater dress that, while high at the collar and long in the sleeves, ended several inches above her knees. In difference to the weather, she'd some sort of thick black tights on and a high-heeled boots, but, still, it was an outfit that was obviously intended to turn somebody's head. From the scowl she was sporting, Jim guessed it wasn't him.

But still. "I was going to ask," he told her as he stepped out of the doorway, allowing her to come in and promptly start riffling through the papers on Pike's desk, "how you managed to walk in four inch heels, but now I think I'd rather know who you're going to meet at this hour dressed like that. Please say it's your super hot college roommate."

Jim knew it was bad when she didn't even roll her eyes at him. "I got a call from the office," (_the office _is what they called the Aquarian Aerospace headquarters in Iowa City, out of which the people at the IRS thought they worked), "and apparently the AFSPC decided that they needed to move up our presentation on the X-63 by three weeks. And, of course, that means I have to run up there now and finish the presentation I've only been working on for five months in less than five hours if we don't want them to pull the contract. Please tell me you've seen the specs for the X-63 in here and that I don't have to go searching through Scotty's mess to find them."

He pouted but went over to Pike's desk anyway. It may be Pike's office (it was certainly his desk), but Jim had staked a claim to the couch in the corner for so long that it was practically his office too. The upshot is to this is that he knows exactly where everything is (though he _still _hasn't figured out the shelving system Pike uses and), though does leave him feeling rather like Pike's secretary at times. He opened one of the bottom drawers and, after a moment, found the appropriate binder. He handed it over and she began flipping through it immediately, checking to make sure everything she needed was in there. "So I guess this means that Pike and Scotty won't be here for the LVT sims?"

"We'll need Pasha too..." she added distractedly.

"Well. Huh." So long as Sulu and Spock didn't have to go up to Iowa City too, he figured they could do some of the work in _Henry _that they'd been planing for this afternoon, but still. There went his plans for not thinking today.

At this, Uhura looked up and gave him this look that was such a perfect mix between disgusted and amused that it really should be patented. After a moment, it softens, and she said in a very light tone, "I'm sure you and your doctor will be able to find _something _to occupy your time."

Jim's brain actually disconnects for a moment after she said this. When he finally managed a haughty, "I've no idea what you're talking about," it's a step to late and Uhura's smiling like the cat who caught the canary.

"Sure you don't, because you've only been talking about him from the moment you picked up his file-"

"That-" _was part of his job. He was the Chief _Procurement _Officer and it was his job to_ procure _people for the office. And that sometimes involved talking to others about the people he was procuring, well, it just meant he couldn't separate his work from everything else. But what else was new?_

"-and flirting outrageously with him since the moment he arrived."

"I flirt. It's what I do. You-" _know that_.

"And you took him with you when you pulled one of your disappearing acts."

"He needed to learn how to dive!" Jim protested, beginning to feel flush. Okay, maybe what Uhura was saying was true, but that didn't _mean _anything. So he liked Bones. So he liked Bones a lot. It wasn't like he was actually going to ever be in the position to act on his feelings. They were going into space together, and if (when) things didn't work out between them, they'd be in a position for things to get uncomfortable fast, and Jim couldn't risk the mission like that. He just couldn't. No matter how much he might want to.

"You never take anyone with you when you take off. Add that to the fact you were gone for a good two days longer than you usually are and that you've not told anyone – even Spock, whom you tell _everything _to, whether he wants to hear about it or not – what you got up to..."

"I told you! I took Bones to the scuba place on Glenlake. We hung out in the Tuckers' apartment and watched old SyFy movies. That's all!" So what if he wished it were more? If wishes were fishes, he'd be in the black right now, in the only place he'd ever felt at home, looking down at the circling Earth with the closest thing to love he's ever felt in his life.

"Really?" her tone was disbelieving. She'd hated him when they'd first met, thinking him to be a no-good drunken loser with an ego larger than most major moons, but she'd since settled into a big sister sort of role. "You two had that entire suite to yourselves for four whole days and all you did was watch movies together?"

"Yes!" he'd all-but shouted, glad she was finally getting the picture.

"I don't believe you."

Or not. "Don't you have some big presentation to do?"

"It can wait. This is more important."

"That is such a girl thing to say."

Rolling her eyes, "Forgive me if I don't find stuffy four-star generals interrupting my _al-Isra wal-Mi'raj _near as exciting as you ex-military-types do. So, spill."

"What's-?"

"It's a Muslim holiday. Don't change the subject."

"There is no subject. Bones and I are just friends."

"But you want to be more," she pressed. And, God, did he hate her for it, because, if there was anything it was impossible to do around Uhura, it was lie. She could read body language better than anyone and, while not the most exciting superpower, it definitely came in handy.

Now, however, was not one of those times. "Okay, yeah, alright, I like him. Big whooptie-fucking-doo."

"And you, being the coward that you are, haven't told him."

"Coward?" Jim asked, slightly offended. "I've got a couple of medals upstairs that say otherwise."

"I mean emotionally."

"I-" _resent the implication. _

"When was the last time you talked to your mother?"

She took his fish-gaping for the answer it was (not since he called her after Basic and told her he enlisted. She'd shouted a bit and cried a lot more. He'd hung up not long after. His fingers had itched to call her when he'd been chosen for the astronaut service, when he'd been chosen for Orion 3, when he'd returned from Orion 6; when he'd been forced to retire. But he hadn't. He didn't even know where she was stationed now, or if she was still in the service at all.

(Ma was an Air Force flight surgeon, short-listed for astronaut training herself when she'd met Dad. She'd ultimately not been chosen to complete training, but that had been okay with her: she was a paediatrician by trade and there weren't exactly all that many kids in space. She'd known the risks better than anybody of what he was doing, and why he wanted to do it anyway... But she'd never tried calling him either, and he'd not changed his phone number for a long, long time.)

"So, now that we've proven you're a coward, what are you going to do about it?"

"Er," he managed when he found his voice, trying to figure out how he ended up on this end of the conversation. It's supposed to be _him _teasing _her _about her weird-ass relationship with Spock. Not whatever the hell this was. "How about nothing? He-" _just got out of a messy divorce; doesn't need the stress of his roommate coming on to him atop of all the other insanity that's been his life for the last few months; can't possibly be interested in him that way._

With a sigh, "I can not honestly believe I'm going to say this and will lie through my teeth if you ever mention this to anyone, but you're too selfless for your own good."

Jim blinked. "Okay, who are you and what have you done with Uhura?"

"Shut up. But, seriously Jim? How many times have you driven Scotty home at three in the morning after a bender without ever saying a word? Or stayed up all night with Pasha watching old Russian soaps when he gets homesick? Or talked Spock out of doing something terribly logical but ultimately stupid? Not to mention that you're the only one Hikaru trusts to remember to water his plants when he goes to visit his girlfriend at Berkeley, and that you'd be offering to take Pike's place at the meeting today if it didn't involve Air Force brass. Even when you're at your most selfish and disappear for days on end, it's only because you don't want anyone to see you as anything other than a rock in the midst of the insanity that is our lives..."

Uhura looked him straight in the eye then. She'd been attempting to do so throughout their conversation, but now she paused until she had them. "Jim," she said softly, "it's okay to be selfish sometimes. he worst that can happen is say he's not interested." She stood up then and, straightening her skirt, added in a tone he was more familiar with. "Which I don't think will happen, anyway."

Feeling somewhat dazed and more than a little pissed off, especially since he's really in no mood today to be yanked around like this, he tried to explain to her he did those things because they were the right things to do (and that, no matter what she might think, he wasn't half-so bad at reading people either, and knew that if he said anything to Bones, it would only end in pain), but before he could say anything more she was already out the door. Jim swore he could hear her laughing over the _clack _of her heels on the concrete. He settled for muttering, "Not a coward," under his breath. Obviously Uhura was just peeved that she had to go into the office so early on a holiday and taking it out on him – as good as she was at reading people, Jim wasn't half-bad himself and _just knew _Bones would gone faster than any ship he'd ever flown.

Obviously.

* * *

**Friday, 6 September, 2024** (T+ 113:47:02)

Alexis Kotko was the one who said they needed to do an EVA to truly take scope of the damages done to the _Constitution _and, ultimately, repair what they could.

Mark Piper refused to let Kotko do it. He was their flight doctor, brought along in part to run several experiments that the egg-heads considered too sophisticated for air-dales like Jim and Ann. But, more than that, he'd been sent along to treat the Russian engineer, whose cough had been growing worse the longer he was on the station. _(It would turn out that Alexis had some sort of rare, small-celled lung cancer that had grown rapidly in the immune-suppressing environment of space; more than a few said that the ISS itself had caused the cancer, which was complete bull, but after the mess with the shuttle and the station every reason was a good one for the people of Earth to decide they wanted to confine themselves to one safe planet, nevermind the wars and crime and everything else that made space, in so many ways, much safer.)_

Willard Decker was the logical choice to EVA. He'd done three already and had been scheduled for the one he and Kotko and Terrell had been planing on doing the next day, before the power had failed and the computers died. He was also the only other person who'd been on the ISS for longer than the time it took Jim to try and fail to insinuate his way into the _Tranquillity _module, having spent the last four months aboard as commander of Expedition 66.

Ann Mulhall was the logical choice to stay aboard ship. She was the Orion 6 mission commander and could pilot it single-handedly in case of emergency – well, so could Jim, but whereas Jim was a twenty-one-year-old who lived like he and Death were old pals, Ann had a husband and kids and who actually cared if she lived or died.

But the EVA really needed two people, especially given the unplanned and unpractised nature of this particular EVA. So Jim was the one who climbed into the second EMU almost by default.

He wasn't looking to be a hero. He was just doing what needed to be done. It had nothing to do with his father, or his grandfather, or any of the other generations of Kirks who'd died in the line of fire. This wasn't a battle zone. This was an exploratory mission, intended only to determine the extent of damage to the space shuttle and to make contact with the International Space Station if at all possible, and Jim went into it with armed with a camera. Decker carried the tool-kit.

_(They were hailed as heroes when they finally landed at Edwards Air Force Base two weeks later. They were all given Congressional Space Medals of Honour for exceptionally meritorious efforts and contributions to the welfare of the nation and mankind– Jim, Ann, Mark, Alexis, and Will for living; Clark, J. M., Robert, and Matryona for dying. A big deal is made over the fact that Jim's father received the award too – for dying on Columbia, - making them the first father-son recipients. A bigger deal is made over his youth, which had been glossed over when Orion 3 had flown the year before, and the fact that he'd been trained primarily as a pilot, not a spacewalker, but had undertaken ten to help Decker fix the shuttle. _

_(They call him the hero of the Triple Six disaster. But he's not, not really. No more than anyone else. _

_(But they don't listen to him. No one ever did.) _

* * *

a/n: God, where to begin?

The quote was part of a speech they wrote up for President Nixon in case Apollo 11 ended badly and Armstrong and Aldrin got stranded on the moon. It's really a quite spectacular speech, though I for one am glad they never had to use it. (The move Jim's watching this time around is _Dead Poets Society_ this time around, and, God, did I have a hard time finding the right movie for this mood, only that I wanted to include one.)

Oh, Nero is just a nickname this time around, if you didn't catch it. He's in charge of the Italian energy conglomerate, Romulus and Sons', and his "real" name is Sigismondo Lombardi, but everyone calls him Nero. As he would, you know, fiddle as Rome burns... and all the other special stuff Roman Emperor Nero got up to.

The Orion 6 mission launched at 17:36:18 Houston time from Cape Canaveral, FL on August 31, 2024 and landed at Edwards Air Force Base in CA on September 20 at 03:34:08, also Houston time. The accident occured on September 5 at 22:16:28 Houston time, but, since the ISS uses Coordinated Universal Standard time, it was 04:16:28 on September 6 by their watches - and 100:40:10 into the mission, which is what the **T+** means. Because it was Orion **6**, Expidition **66**, on September **6**, the **6th** day of the mission, the papers called it the Triple Six accident. Various sources make different claims to which of the 6s are the 3 involved in the name (rather like which two towers are the towers of _The Two Towers_). The sources for the American's names are in the a/n for last chappie, but the two cosmonaut's names are all my own. (_Mayor_ is the Russian equivolent of Major).

Enduring Freedom was the first Operation of the war in Afganistan; Zulfiqar is the name of the crescent sword you see a lot of on Islamic flags, and is the name I gave to the final campaign Pike served in, occuring sometime in 2018. Daniel Daly is a Marine, one of 17 people to have won 2 Medals of Honour; it is often said they would have given him a third for his actions in a later war if Congress hadn't thought it presumptous.

Tal al-Polana is the "name" I gave to T'Pol - "al-Palona" is a real last name from the region, so I just flipped the letters. Tal is also a real Hebrew name and I figured that the Americans she might've served with would have shortened it to T'Pol, because that is such an American thing to do; her _violence is the last refuge of the incompent_ comment is from Asimov's _Foundation_ and is, in my opinion, a very Vulcan comment.

The AFSPC is the Air Force Space Command, in Colorado, and is considered a major command - ie, headed by a 4star general. _Al-Isra wal-Mi'raj_, or Isra and Mi'raj, The Night Journey, is the holiday in celebration of Muhammad's journey to what is now The Dome of the Rock and ascension to heaven... (in my mind, for this story, Uhura is as much of a non-practising Muslim as Spock is a non-practising Jew).

I think that's it. Any questions, comments, concerns... well, you know the deal by now.


	5. more to life

_"____There's more to this life than just living."__  
_Frank Borman – Gemini 7, Apollo 8

_

* * *

_

If Leo's learned one thing in his life, it's that ideas were dangerous, far more so than actions.

NASA's fear of loosing more astronauts was leading to the early conclusion of the Constellation Program. Russia's fear of loosing it's foothold in the Caucasus and, thus, becoming vulnerable to Turkish forces, had led to the Third Chechen War. People's instinctive fear of change had brought men like Boian Ayel and Robert Richardson into power.

Maybe it was fear that was truly dangerous. But other feelings – other ideas – were treacherous too. And that Leo knew far too well.

* * *

**Saturday, 23 December, 2028** (L-207 days)

The scene Leo walked into as he left the infirmary was something straight out of a nightmare. Or a _Brady Bunch_ episode, though for Leo they were near enough the same thing:

There was a small, much loved (and more maligned) poker table in the middle of the table, occupying the overly large gap between the training simulators and the computers that ran them. Reference books, open to random pages, were stacked precariously atop of brightly-coloured binders across its surface; spiral-bound notebooks missing half their pages and notebook computers with lurid designs on their covers hung at awkward angles over the edge of the table; uncapped highlighters were drying at random intervals.

Jim was perched on a rickety wicker chair at one end, the eye in the middle of this tornado of research and chaos. His flight jacket was open, revealing a white t-shirt with oversized black union jack that may or may not be the most sedate thing in his closet. The orange highlighter clipped to the front of it matched his shoelaces perfectly.

At the other end of the table, Pike and Spock have managed to eke out a small corner for a chessboard and were playing a match. Spock, clearly winning, looked almost bored. All he could see of Pike was his back, but from the set of his shoulders he knows there's this intense look of concentration on his face, near as to be identical to the one Jim's wearing now. (One of these days, Leo thought, he'll have to ask Jim just how he met Pike. He might even get a straight answer. He usually did.)

Chekov, the Russian who was apparently such a spectacular genius that it was worth having him around even though he was only seventeen, and Sulu, who might well be the only sane person he'd met since this whole escapade started, were bent close over one of the simulation computers. They've changed out of their flight suits – Sulu into jeans and white button-down, the kid into slacks and a dark shirt, looking almost, but not quite, like an adult. When he got closer, he saw they were playing a video game, and immediately took back any thoughts of adulthood or sanity he's ever had towards either of them.

And, while Scotty was nowhere to be seen, Uhura was, sitting on one of the dying couches that also inhabited the no-man's land between computer banks and sims. The couch was faded red, her sweater was snow white, and so were her teeth when she smiled widely at him and waved for him to join her.

It's not particularly domestic, not in the 1960s sense of the term. The only concession to the holiday was the presence of a small fake tree on one of the computer consoles, and even then it's not a perfect miniature pine or spruce or fur. No, it was something out of _A Charlie Brown Christmas_, and, somehow, he wasn't not sure if that's worse or better than a normal tree. And yet...

And yet there were Christmas carols coming out of the speakers that dotted the hangar. Leo's fairly certain, by the smell, there were gingerbread cookies somewhere in the room too – probably somewhere in the mess Jim's made of the poker table. It's about as far from a holiday special as you could get, but...

It feels more like home than his house in Athens ever did. (Which just proved his whole marriage to Jocelynn had been a mistake, but, hell, he'd been fairly certain of _that_ since the moment the honeymoon ended. Which, if anyone was curious, was three days after the wedding. It might've taken longer, but she'd had a huge case coming up wouldn't take any more time off than that. Which also proved that marrying a divorce lawyer was possibly the third stupidest thing a a person could do, after letting oneself be kidnapped by rouge astronauts and being peripherally involved in the death of a senator's son.)

He snorted at this thought, which caused Uhura to raise an eyebrow as he sunk onto the couch next to her. "Care to share with the class?"

"Just a thought I had."

"Anything interesting?"

"Not really."

She smirked at him for a moment, as if she thought she knew what he meant, and began to say something more, only to be interrupted by the soft _ping_ of the elevator door behind them and a rich brogue calling out, "Laddies, it took visiting every off-licence an' petrol station within fifty miles, but I've returned with libations. I've got beer for the colonel – eh, _no_, you cannae have any, you throttle-jockey; you agreed to take me an' Pavel to see me girl before who go an' see yours an' you're not doing it sozzled, thank you very much – an' a case of some of fruity concoction for you, Jim lad. An' there's egg nog an' scotch for the rest of us, if you dinna mind the wee bottles. It was all they had.

"Oh, an' there's the carry-away in the rest of these bags – the Golden Dragon was all that was open, an', since I was the only one there, I had them whip up two of everything, so that should last you lot through the weekend, at least..."

Spock and Pike pack up their chess game. Uhura started picking up random piles from the chaos that was the poker table and moving it to the floor, while Chekov and Sulu brought chairs over from the computer banks. Leo was still at a loss to do in these incredibly intimate, familial moments, where everyone else seemed to know their place and he's just left to fit in where he can.

But then Jim kicked out the chair next to him and gave him a look that said, _you coming man? _and, somehow, it didn't matter any more that he didn't know the first names of half the people in the room, let alone anything else about them. Jim trusted them and he trusted Jim, despite the fact he'd been instrumental in kidnapping him at least twice now and wore shoes with orange laces and clearly had more issues than most long-running magazines.

And, yes, Jim had been acting strange for the past couple of days, ever since the military had decided to move something or other for one of Aquarian's contracts with them ahead. Leo wasn't exactly sure how that worked – if the air force was one of the infamous Stockholders they would sometimes go on about, or if individual members of the military were involved, or if Aquarian was actually a real company with real contracts – and didn't really care what the truth of it was so long as he wasn't expected to play nice with them. He was notoriously bad with hobnobbing with idiots who felt they owned him because they had donated money to wherever he was working at the time.

Nevertheless, because of the change in the timetable, the trip to Tobago Jim had promised him had postponed indefinitely. Jim had not been pleased, even if Leo was.

("We're going up in seven months, Bones," he'd said. "Shackleton's exotic as they come, and, granted, day trips to _Mare Cognitum_ and the Fra Mauro Highlands aren't anything to shake your finger at either, but you can't go to the Moon without seeing Earth first. You just _can't_." He'd then promised vacations to Paris and Rio before running off to help someone with something or other. Leo'd been trying to decide if it would be better to bring along vials of benzylpenicillin or just to cultivate the _P. chrysogenum _himself and, as such, hadn't been paying much attention to the details of Jim's theatrics. Leo then had spent the next three hours debating with himself if antibiotics would really be necessary in the vacuum of space, and then a great deal more time reconciling himself to that vacuum.)

What all this had added up to was that, because of the military thing, everyone else had been rather busy fretting (or, in Jim's case, sulking) over it, and had spent the last week or so up in Iowa City, doing whatever it is they did while Leo fretted about antibiotics and analgesics and how much of the rest of the World Health Organization's Essential Medicines list really was essential. As a result of this, this was the first time everyone had been in the hanger at the same time in over a week.

He still wasn't too comfortable with the others. Spock bugged the crap out of him; Uhura reminded him of one of his cousins, and not in a necessarily good way; and Chekov was too young. Scotty was nice enough, as was Sulu, but he really had little in common with them other than the fact that all three of them were going to the Moon, and Pike... Well, Pike _still_ reminded him of a lawyer. Or a modern-day Mafia boss with an overdeveloped sense of _paterfamilias._ Okay, maybe not a mob boss, but _someone_ who felt that anyone he took under his wing became, to some degree or another, a member of his family.

Which really was the source of the problem. They were _family_ and he wasn't. Leo was fantastically horrendous at office politics and even worse when it came to remembering which parts of his family weren't speaking to each other. Oh, Jim was trying fantastically to fit him into the tree, though damn if he could tell where, but, despite all that, he'd only been with them for two months. They may have drugged him with truth serum and they mightn't believe he killed Bryon Richardson, but they didn't really _trust_ him yet. Not like family anyway.

Which was probably for the best, as his marriage had stalled before the first week was over, even if it had taken another seven months to properly break down, and his interactions with people he actually shared blood with tended to be somewhat more painful.

All that being said, though, he still found himself looking forward to the mission. Yes, large parts of it scared the shit out of him. Yes, a great deal of it went over his head – he got the feeling that there was a great deal of things that they kept from him, failed to share with him, and generally assumed he already knew. But, God, was he looking forward to it.

Shaking his head, Leo took the seat – and the proffered sesame chicken – and decided it didn't matter. None of it. For better or worse, these people were Jim's family, and, by curious default, his too. And if he found himself minding that fact far less than he should, well, that was probably the Stockholm syndrome talking.

* * *

**Sunday, 24 December, 2028** (L-206 days)

Spock, according to Jim, had been born in south-western Iran shortly before everything went pear-shaped in that region. He, like T'Pol, was ethnically _Kalimi _– which extensive googling had revealed to mean a member of the Persian Jewish community, though, from what he understood, most _Kalimi _lived outside of Iran these days. (Leo also got the feeling that Spock and T'Pol were related somehow, if distantly, but that was more of a hunch than anything else, based in large part off a twenty-year-old photo he'd found of the woman in the online encyclopaedia under _notable Persian Jews _taken a few years before she'd founded Durandal Security Services.) Spock's family had left Shiraz for Pretoria when he was very young, and then he'd gone to England for schooling. This last bit had apparently caused some rift between Spock and his father, though no one had bothered to tell Leo why and, undoubtedly, never would until ages after the whole thing had been resolved.

For the most part, Leo respected Spock, for things like his inability to equivocate and his useful, if singularly annoying, encyclopaedic knowledge of the physical sciences. The guy was obviously good at his job and could have been the next Witten or Chandrasekhar if he actually worked at a university doing whatever it was theoretical physicists did rather than at trying to find ways to send people clandestinely to the Moon and keep them alive for an indefinite period after they got there. Granted, he was a bit of a self-righteous mother-fucker who could be more obnoxious than some of Jocelynn's lawyer friends twice over, but he seemed decent enough. But what did he know? Most of the time Leo'd spent with him had been in sims with half-a-dozen other people. The only one he really spent much time with one-on-one was Jim, or sometimes Pike or Uhura.

Uhura. Jim claimed that she and Spock had _some sort of thing _(his exact words; what was he, twelve?) going on.

Still, regardless of the relationship that might or might not exist between their resident science guru and their comms officer, it was because of her that Spock was trying to exercise his (distinctly non-existent) powers of equivocation right right then.

They'd spent the first part of the morning whittling down the core anaesthetics on the WHO's essential medicines list from thirteen to six, considering weight, flammability, volatility, likely necessity, and off-label uses. Then they'd done away with all three recommended anti-leprosy drugs, crossed off all twelve TB meds, and, in a burst of minimalist enthusiasm, eliminated the entire antiviral category in one fell swoop before breaking for coffee.

Leo was actually feeling pretty good about this, despite probably managing to set back the standard of healthcare back fifty years between the two of them, but what could they do? There were severe limitations to what even Leo would be able to do, medically wise, on the Moon, and there was no use bringing along four types of local anaesthetics when one would work for their needs just fine – let alone meds to treat ailments it would be downright impossible for them to contract in space.

Then, of course, Spock had come back into the infirmary (with _tea_), and decided to tell him in his usual, subtle way: "I feel it is my duty to warn you that Nyota has a tendency to adopt projects outside her nominal expertise, as well as a penchant for becoming emotionally attached to said projects," which, of course, was only subtle in that it left Leo with no idea what he was talking about.

"Okay?" he managed, drawing the word out to cover the awkward pause that followed.

For a moment, Spock looked almost amused, but it was a passing thing or, more likely, a trick of the light, and the subject dropped.

It wasn't much later, though, when he was starting to get curious about how Spock knew so much about opioid analgesics, enough for Leo to start considering asking, before they're interrupted, his only warning being one of Spock's not-amused not-expressions angled at a point somewhat past Leo's left shoulder.

He didn't spin around quickly enough and shortly found someone hands covering his eyes.

"What the fuck Jim?" It could only be Jim. No one else lived as if life was some sort of joke the universe was telling itself, as if being alive was excuse enough for bad jokes and worse pick-up lines.

"Sneaking up on you, of course."

"Yes, but ___why__?" _

"Why not?" The answer was so guileless, Leo almost believed it. Almost. "'Sides, I need to steal you."

"Colonel, it is by definition impossible to steal a-" Spock began, to be cut off a moment later by Jim removing his hands from Leo's eyes, flipping Spock off with one, and tugging on Leo's shoulder with the other. It was a somewhat inelegant movement, at least as viewed from about five inches away from the middle finger in question, but that was Jim.

"Jim, Spock! Jim! Don't you remember? It's my name and that's what friends do: call each other by their names. And Bones doesn't mind if I steal him, do you Bones?"

"You've already kidnapped me twice-"

"You agreed to come along the second time. Technically that's abduction."

"-what's one more? Though I should point out that, if you wanted me here badly enough to kidnap me in the first place, you might, I dunno, let me do the work you brought me here to do some of the time. It's hard enough trying to figure out what medicines we'll need without dealing with your wanderlust."

Petulantly, "But my wanderlust is why we're here, Bones. Well, not mine so much as the Tuckers', and maybe Barnett's, but mine's definitely a part."

"Fine," Leo sighed. "Where are you dragging me off to this time? Paris? Tobago? Bora Bora?"

"Next door, actually, but if you want to go to Bora Bora we'll have to wait 'til monsoon season is over. And this horrible thing with the X-63 is over and done with. Though, admittedly, it wouldn't have been a problem if General Barstow hadn't decided he wanted to indulge in a bit of insider trading and force us to have it finished enough to announce to someone more than just the Senate's strategic forces subcommittee before the next fiscal year. Seems to think it will cause his stocks to sky-rocket. Hopefully the IRS or FBI or whoever looks into these kind of things will catch him before it ever makes it into production."

"Is that actually what happened?" Leo asked as he hauled himself out of his chair. He hadn't been at all clear on what had caused the rush, especially when Aquarian seemed to have planned everything else down to the letter.

Jim waved a hand idly (and far more gracefully than when it had been in Leo's face), "No. It's just the usual Russo-Turkish border issues in the Caucasus, but the State Department is spooked and, well, that's what the X-63 is for. Place one over Uganda and, bang," he actually snapped his fingers here, "problem solved. Theoretically. Which is, of course, the problem. Though wouldn't it be nice if it actually was something as banal as insider trading?"

"I guess?"

"Good man." He clapped Leo on the shoulder and proceeded to manoeuvre him down the hall.

"So why am I being kidnapped this time?"

"Stolen, Bones!" he laughed, sounding happier than he had since Chicago. "Stolen! 'Sides, it's for a good cause."

"And the last two times weren't?"

"Me and Aquarian ___are_ good causes. You'll like this one too. It's gooder. Better. More good. On a larger scale, at least, so something like that. Anyway, you know the X-63?"

"Vaguely." Leo shrugged out of Jim's hold when it became clear that by next door he meant Pike's office, not the simulators or whatever building was closest to the inn above ground (which, knowing Jim, was just as likely to be a bar as someone's grandmother's house). "Still haven't explained what it's got to do with me."

"We need you to write a report."

"A report? I thought I was supposed to be lying low and not at all connected with Aquarian. And I don't know anything about this plane you're building."

"Well, first thing you've got to know is that the X-63 isn't so much an _experimental plane _as an experimental system of _orbital spy platforms _that could potentially destroy the world if some idiot ever thinks to equip them with with nukes. Which they'll probably want to do sooner or later." By this point they'd invaded Pike's office and Jim was pulling papers off of the desk, his tone making it very clear what he thought about the idiots who wanted _that_.

Leo favoured him with a look that explained his thoughts on idiots who wanted him to do unnecessary paperwork. He didn't notice.

Eventually Jim brandished a cardboard tube at him, the kind that posters were mailed in. Inside was an incredibly detailed artist's rendering of something that looked exactly like your stereotypical satellite, baring one or two key differences. They're so subtle it took Leo a moment to realize what he was looking at but, when he does, his stomach dropped like it had when he'd seen the first headline accusing him of Bryan Richardson's murder. "It's a death star." It looked absolutely nothing like one, but the shared purpose was clear.

"Call it an orbital platform. _Please_. If I have to hear one more joke about it, or one more not-so-oblique Star Wars reference, I might just go mad. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've already gone ahead and done so in preparation."

Normally, this would have been the perfect time to make a jab about Jim being one to talk, being lord and master of the bad joke (and the only person Leo'd ever met that could actually draw a laugh with some of them), or maybe something about orange shoelaces, but he couldn't. "You're building a death star for the United States military." The words were flat, somewhat pained. "And what does this have to do with me?"

"Technically, we're only _designing _the X-63s, and they're meant to be more... all-encompassing, all-knowing master satellites, each operating a platoon of lesser spy satellites. Our original contract was to make something that could be the new eyes and ears of the military, and that itself isn't a bad idea. It'd just be a new way to track enemy aircraft and troop movements. Give the technology another twenty years and the X-63s might even be able to dispatch, direct, and control unmanned aircraft to problem spots... Pop one over Peru to cover the eastern seaboard, another over Uganda to keep an eye on the Caucasus, and a third around Papa New Guinea and you've got global satellite coverage...

"They're not designed to be highly manoeuvrable, or to be armed, or be really anything other than a way of keeping us in-the-know. I'd prefer the tech to be in the UN's hands," he added lightly, flopping onto the couch next to him with a stack of binders in his hand. All were in lurid colours. The laptop balanced on top had a plaid cover.

Strangely, this made Leo feel a little bit better; if Jim could laugh about it, could cover it in bright colours and ridiculous patterns, than it couldn't be as bad as he was making it sound. He'd seen Jim serious, and it was nothing like this. Hell, it was better than his recent moping over the loss of his Tobagonian holiday.

"But, then again," Jim continued, "Pike tells me I've been biased towards the United States military ever since they kicked me out. I've tried to tell him, no, I've always been like this, but he doesn't believe me. I don't know why. It's all very disheartening.

"Oh? And please don't call it a death star. Somewhere in the world, you're causing George Lucas to roll over in his grave. Or want to die if he's not dead yet. I'm not sure which, but I'm sure neither option is very pleasant."

Leo couldn't restrain his exasperated sigh. "You've still not explained what it's got to do with me, Jim. I know you enjoy kidnapping me – and don't think we're not going to be having a talk about that one of _these days –_ but, really, is there an actual report you want me to write, or was this just your way of trying to save me from Spock?"

"Former, mostly, though a bit of the latter. Spock just takes some getting used to."

"If you say so."

"I do. And, if we have to talk about my propensity for kidnapping, we really need to talk about yours for getting kidnapped. I'm sure it will all stem back to our parents withholding affection from us as kids – isn't that what psychologists always say?"

"The paper, Jim?"

"Fine, Bones. Be that way. See if I care. The paper...

"Well, you see, Barstow – he's in charge of the Air Force Space Command; it's his first major command, and I think more than half of this is him trying to impress his superiors – wants to present the designs for the X-63 to the Senate's armed forces committee by September. Now, obviously, we won't be here, but we have to keep up the pretence to keep them from pulling the contract and giving it to someone else, like the Indian aerospace firm Romulus and Sons' bought up a couple of years back, Narada something-or-other. The one named after a Hindu sage anyway, not the WWI yacht-___cum__-_patrol boat_-____cum_-yacht – at least, I don't think...

"Anyway," he back-pedalled, apparently chided by Leo's rolling eyes, "Our hope with the X-63 contract was to draw things out long enough that we're on the Moon before the plans were finished. Only now that's gone to pieces and, if we stick to his time table, we're expected to hand him the finished designs before the end of April. Which we can't do, 'cause there's always a possibility he'll push it through manufacturing and have them up before things get any sort of settled, and that will just mess up our plans entirely."

"I'm pretty sure half the world's militaries will notice the moment _Enterprise _takes off, and the rest will know before we ever land."

"Not those plans – no, we _want _them to know we've gone up. No, the problem is that, if we give them the plans too soon, they'll be in definite US military control, but if we delay... well, it might be a government contract, but the people at Tanaka, Ueda, and Fujihara assure us that the plans belong to Aquarian until the moment we officially turn them over. And then we can control who gets them... Well, the Stockholders will, but that's neither here nor there.

"But, basically, we need you to come up with some sort of medical concern that the government will be forced to look into before they can present the idea to Congress and write a report to that effect, preferably with lots of big, dangerous-sounding medical words. Uhura's going through the motions of making it look like we hired you legitimately rather than, you know, drugging you and pulling you out of that dive in St. Louis, so there's no need to worry about that. Spock's covering the environmental angles, so we can have a couple of different issues for them to worry about. Just think of something that will delay us having to hand over the plans until we're already on the Moon, that's all we're asking."

"So you can cheat the government out of something it paid for?"

"They'll probably freeze all our assets once they figure out who's behind the launch anyway. There's a reason why Trip moved his company headquarters to Cannes and Barnett is building an island or three."

Leo didn't know what to say to to that, so he didn't try, just picked up one of the binders and began flipping through it.

* * *

It wasn't until Pike came into his office, clearly surprised to see them both on the couch – Leo tucked at one end, balancing a laptop on top of Jim's feet, which had somehow ended up in Leo's lap around the time the wayward astronaut started talking about micrometeorites, – that the thought even occurred to him that the infirmary was just down the hall and had adequate work space for both of them. Space that wouldn't require them to sit in such close contact.

Only when this thought was quickly by another, this one along the vein of _too comfortable to move now_, did Leo realize he had a problem.

* * *

**Wednesday, 27 December, 2028** (L-203 days)

The story went like this:

Leonard McCoy met Jocelynn Arceneaux in September of '27. She was two years out of law school and working at respectable, though hardly renowned, firm three blocks from the hospital. This proximity had been the only reason that M'Benga had chosen them when he needed a someone to handle his divorce. Jocelynn had been assigned to his case and Leo had been called in to testify on Geoff's character. Why Leo had been chosen for this honour, he was never quite sure, but he'd gone in and explained that, despite Mrs. M'Benga's disbelieving protests, her husband's only mistress was his job, as the number of hours he worked would attest. And if he found Geoff's lawyer attractive, so what? He put in too many hours at the hospital to think of doing anything about it.

That didn't Jocelynn from coming up to him after his disposition and asking him out for drinks.

They'd gone out that night, partly because it was the only night for a week they were both free, and had moved on to proper dates before the ink on M'Benga's papers was dry.

It was an odd sort of courtship – they both worked far too many hours, and would go days without seeing each other, only to meet up in the middle of the week for lunch and end up fucking in the nearest by-the-hour motel to the restaurant before one or the other had to go back to work – but it worked for them.

Both of them had had to work over the holidays, but she'd dragged him down to Baton Rouge that New Years to meet her parents. She'd been very insistent on that, and Leo'd rather gotten the impression that at least two of her previous relationships had ended because Mr. Arceneaux hadn't thought them good enough for his daughter. But, unlike her previous boyfriends, he was a doctor, a brain surgeon even, and that apparently passed muster, despite his Baptist upbringing. Still, they'd all had too much champagne when one of her cousins had said they were so perfect for each other that they should get married. He'd said, "Maybe we should," and, like that, they'd gotten engaged.

They'd gotten married shortly before Valentine's Day. It was around then he'd realized that, though he might love much about Jocelynn – her passion, her drive - the more time he spent with her, the less he genuinely liked her.

Leo tried to change that, he honestly had, but then his dad had gotten in a car accident. He'd still lived in Cecil, over four hours from Athens, and had already been in surgery by the time Leo had gotten to the hospital in Brooks County he'd been taken to. He'd died three days later. His death had been hard on Leo, but Jocelynn, despite her own relationship with her father, hadn't seemed to understand, and they found themselves growing further apart.

Easter had come with Jocelynn announcing they were going to have a baby, and by then Leo had known he'd stay with her, if only for the kid's sake, though he'd known full well that was the wrong reason to be married to anyone.

Mother's Day had brought the news she'd miscarried after a particularly difficult day in court. For all that he'd wanted the baby, it would have been lying to say there hadn't been a part of him glad that they would not be brining a child into their fractured marriage. It was a treasonous though, and Leo hated himself for it.

He'd taken Bryan Richardson as a patient not long after, and, by Veteran's Day, she'd filed for divorce, representing herself. Taking advantage of the bad press surrounding Bryan's death, she had taken Leo for everything he had.

Leo reminded himself of this quite forcibly when Jim came into the infirmary, threw himself across one of his chairs (head over one armrest, feet dangling over the other), and begged to be entertained. The story was a testament to how badly things went when you confused lust with love.

* * *

**a/n: **so... this is shorter than I would have liked (it was my intention to get one more section/day into place before posting it, but after about 5 days worth of attempts I realized that I'd not written anything worth keeping, so deleted it and decided to end it here. 'Sides, I think it will work better from Jim's POV) but it's still here. Though, in my defense, I've managed to get the previous sections all up on my lj, do some editing for some other stories I've put up there, finish watching the entire VOY series (it only took me 42 weeks, give or take; my take on it is on the lj as well, which there's a link to on my profile page), have to deal with my sister (don't ask), and tried (and failed) to write another chappie for "The Dare". So it really didn't take me long this time around at all.

That being said... actual notes time.

The whole Russia-Turkey border issue as being a precipitate for a war in the Caucasus is from _The Next 100 Years _by Gerorge Friedman. I've mentioned it before. Anyway, the idea is that controling Chechnya is crutial to the security of Russia's borders as Turkey groes more powerful (which Friedman makes a good arguement it will). Once they control Chechnya, they can make a go for Georgia, so as to connect up to Armenia, which is pro-Russian. Georgia is decidedly anti-Armenian. Azerbaijan isn't strategically important, but it's a buffer with Iran and makes for a stronger border all round - if they get Armenia. My take on this is pretty much to form: Russia invades Chechnya as part of their restore-the-Warsaw-Pact move, Turkey sends troops into Georgia because they don't want a war on their doorstep. Chechnya fights back, but the Russians go in from the side, take Azerbaijan easily and are now poised to take Georgia from three fronts (as Armenia is allied with Russia). There is, in this 'verse, currently no war in Georgia itself, and NATO forces are stationed throughout the region in attempt to keep there from being one. US forces are also being used to help curtail local warlords/terrorists who are using this invasion to stir up old rivalries. It's not going so well.

The World Health Organization has a fairly long list of essential meds. I believe them when they say all are essential - for a hospital. When your only patients are going to be 8 people with known medical histories and no way of catching anything (like polio or lepresy) in space, I've taken liberties with triming it. I don't recommend actual hospitals do the same.

I made Spock (and T'Pol) _Kalimi_ because I could. I made Uhura Sunni Muslim (which isn't mentioned here, but I might as well bring it up here) because Mombasa is a fun word, is a city in Kenya (where I decided she'd be from), and has a Sunni population. In Gene Roddenbery style, almost everyone is mostly-non-practicing whatever-religion-I-happen-to-make-them, and this is no judgement on anyone or any relgion in particular. And, for the record, I'm making Winnona Kirk Jewish too.

I also made Spock a theoretical phyisist because, well, it had to be _some _science. And the quote for this chappie was originally going to be on M-String theory, and I thought it fitting.

There are at least two direct quotes from TOS movies in this chappie.

The X-63 is also a take from Friedman, moved ahead about 15 years from his outline 'cause I liked the idea of "Battle Stars" so much.

The _Narada_ **was **a yacht the goverment bought for use as a patrol boat during WWI and returned to it's owner afterwards. It was named for the Hindu prophet Narada Mundi.

I also just realized that today is still March 13, which I made Sam Kirk's b-day. It's also my little brother's b-day, which is why I chose it. So happy birthday to all.

any other questions/comments/concerns/queries can be directed to me easily below, and I do make an effort to answer all of them. -aadarshinah


	6. watching and wanting

_"She is forever moving just out of reach and I sail on, never touching, only watching and wanting to know."_  
Alfred Worden – Apollo 15

* * *

They called him a hero, but that had always been a lie. Other Kirks, they'd been heroes. Jim had done nothing no one else in his position wouldn't have done. Every medal he'd earned was as much a matter of luck as it was willingness to do what needed to be done to bring his crew home safe. It wasn't heroism, it was pragmatism.

If there was anything heroic in him, he would have fought for the Constellation Program even after they forced him into retirement. He would have called Ma after Orion 6 and made her understand he wasn't going into space to hurt her. He would have kissed Bones the moment he realized he'd fallen, despite all his attempts not to, in love.

But Jim wasn't a hero, and hadn't.

* * *

**Tuesday, 2 January, 2029** (L-197 days)

"You're kidding!" Uhura laughed, trying not to fall off her perch on the the arm of the couch. It was a futile attempt, though, her laughter was so hard, and eventually she gave up and sunk into a nearby chair which, if a bit wobbly, at least was firm enough to not dump her every time she fell into a paroxysm of laughter.

"Why would I make something like that up?"

From beside him on the couch, "I dunno. Making up crazy stories seems to me a very Jim thing to do."

"Just because I might've suggested the head of the AFSPC is trying to ruin our vacation plans for his monetary gain doesn't... mean... that..."

Jim felt his bluster wilt beneath Bones' _I am not amused look_. That, and the fact they'd finally managed to talk him into wearing a flight suit like a proper astronaut-in-training, which was really quite distracting. Far more distracting than it had ever been when he'd been with the Astronaut Office, and that had been made up of a fair few attractive men and women in prime physical condition.

God, this ignoring how he felt crap was worse than he'd ever imagined. In fact, he was fairly certain said denial was only making him want Bones _more_, though Uhura's attempts to help – by making up excuses for them to spend more time together, by talking him up to the doctor; by slipping condoms and lube into his pockets when he wasn't looking and giving him superior looks from across the room when he discovered them hours later – weren't making things any easier either.

Still, seizing the distraction, he beamed at them both. "Okay, so maybe I _would_ make up a story like this, but that doesn't mean I did. Just google it. Birth dates, death dates – it's all in the Census Bureau's records."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. I mean, my dad's obvious. Disintegrated on live television _Columbia_ did. Ma saw it, of course, and went into labour a month early. But my brother was already around then and he was what? Six? No, his birthday was in March, so almost six, but not quite. Which is point one for the Kirk Curse."

"You have a brother?"

Jim bit his lip at that, quickly turning it into a smile that showed nothing of his true feelings. "Sam, yeah. He was brilliant. A pilot, of course, but probably would of made a better scientist. He'd the eccentric, scatter-brained nature of one, at least while we were kids. Didn't see much of him after he enlisted, 'cause Ma was furious at him, but he was still a great guy. Even helped me forge my papers to enlist early. Died when I was still in the 393b. Flew into a mountain trying to avoid a mess of ground-to-airs in Azerbaijan, or so they tell me...

"Fuck, that makes me older now than he was when he died. Never expected that to happen. Anyway," he added with false cheerfulness, not liking the sad, near pitying look on their faces (and, granted, for someone who'd known at least that much of the Kirk Curse, Uhura seemed the more distressed; as for Bones, he just looked concerned and understanding, not judging – exactly as he had when Jim had first mentioned his father – and that somehow made it possible for him to continue. Jim didn't know if he could otherwise), "Sam doesn't count, not as far as the curse is concerned, 'cause he didn't have any kids. Not that he told me about, least.

"Which I guess brings us to Grandpa Tiberius. Dad's dad. He died in the Tan Son Nhat C-5 accident in the last days of the Vietnam War. That was part of Operation Babylift, when they were trying to pull all the Americans out of the country." They said the fact that anyone survived the crash at all was probably because of Grandpa Tiberius' _remarkable demonstration of flying skill_. Got him an Air Force Cross, which Grandma Suzie had kept in a frame on the mantle with a picture of her husband on the banks of the Saigon River. There was a picture of Dad there too, taken when he piloted _Discovery_ during STS-96, and Dad's Congressional Space Medal of Honour. Grandma Suzie had put them there too; Ma had been gone too often to waste time putting up any pictures during his childhood.

Shrugging that off too, "Anyway, Dad was like, what? Two at the time? Something like that. So that's point two for the Kirk Curse."

"To quote Spock, it's just coincidence, Kirk." The fact that Uhura was laughing did little for his case or hers. "You went into flying because your dad flew, and he went into it because his dad flew. It's human nature, not a curse."

Jim didn't seriously think there was a curse either, but it was a rather interesting – and terrible – string of coincidences. And it made for a crazy story, and a crazy story like this was better to focus on right now than Scotty's efforts to fix something in the LVT, or the reports on the X-63 they'd sent off to General Barstow yesterday. And, if it made them laugh, well, that made it all worth it.

"Maybe, but what about Samuel, Grandpa Tiberius' dad? He was in the Army Air Corps until Hitler invaded France. The day he learned from his superiors the States wouldn't be joining the fight just yet, he went AWOL and joined the Royal Air Force. He became one of the first Americans to die in WWII." Got a Distinguished Flying Cross from George VI for his actions too. It and a black-and-white picture of his great-grandfather next to his Spitfire sat on the mantel next to the others. "Grandpa Tiberius was three or so, which is another point."

"Which just proves that foolhardiness is a Kirk family trait."

Jim gave her the finger before turning supplicatingly on Bones, whose expression promptly turned from concern to _dear God, why me_? He chose to take this as a good sign. "You believe me, don't you Bones?"

"I dunno, Jim. If the rest of your family is anything like you..."

Indignantly, "And what's that supposed to mean?"

He'd never known anyone who could say with their eyebrows _you know exactly what that means_, let alone detail all the injustices. Or compel him to explain, for perhaps the twelfth time, that he'd only been peripherally involved with his first kidnapping (in that he'd chosen who they were going to kidnap, but had not actually done the kidnapping; Bones didn't seem to see the distinction).

God, if Uhura kept laughing like that, the others would hear her in the simulator and come out, asking all sorts of questions he most definitely did not want to answer right now. Though Sulu, from his place at one of the computers controlling the sim, seemed to be entertaining just those thoughts.

Jim leaned his head back until it collided with the couch cushions and stared at the ceiling, wondering what it said about him if his closest friends were all such cruel people. He continued, "Doesn't end there, though. Samuel's dad, Nathan, went off and joined the RAF during WWI before we got involved in that one too. He became one of the first flying aces. His plane was shot down somewhere over Germany, of course..." And, true to form, a black-and-white of his great-great-grandfather with his SE5 sat on the mantel with his Victoria Cross. And, also true to form, "Samuel was like fifteen months or something at the time, which is another point for the curse...

"Can't really go back farther than that, 'cause they didn't have planes before then, but I bet if you find some famous naval battle, one of my ancestors died in it. I've always had the sinking feeling that Nathan Kirk's dad, whoever he might've been, died in the Spanish-American War; the timing would have been about right for it.

"Anyway, it's like a biological imperative for Kirks, dying in terribly heroic ways shortly after they've fathered children that will, invariably, go on to die in more spectacularly heroic ways – but," he sat up and grinned at Bones, finally answering the question that had started this all, "it does mean that no one in my family's ever died of cancer. So, if I do come down with it, you can know for certain that all the radiation up there," he waved distractedly at the ceiling, "caused it."

"That's only your dad's side," Uhura admonished, halfway between her earlier laughter and genuine worry.

"Yeah, well, Ma never exactly shared much about her side of the family, did she?"

She rolled her eyes.

Bones looked at him curiously though, as if Ma was more interesting than a plethora of dead Kirks, which maybe she was. "What's this?"

"Kirk here hasn't talked to his mother since he was sixteen," Uhura answered before he'd the chance to, sounding smug and exasperated all at the same time.

"It's not my fault," Jim protested. "I couldn't get home in time for Sam's funeral. I'd probably have talked to her then if she'd been there."

"There are such things as phones, you know."

"Which only work if you know the phone number," he corrected petulantly. "But really, it's no big deal. Ma and I have a screwed up relationship. I know this. I get it. I'm over it. Can we drop it now?"

Unfortunately, a change of topic didn't seem to be on the books. "I looked it up after our little conversation the other day. She's been at the hospital at Ramstein for about two years now. I've got the address upstairs, if you want it."

"I don't."

"You're almost as bad as Spock is with his dad, though he, at least, let's me send cards on holidays and birthdays. Men!" she huffed, then, looking briefly at her bemused company, announced, "I'm going to see if there's anything I can help the others with before you lot corrupt them with your evil, repressed ways," before going off an doing just that.

Jim stared after her retreating form in something somewhat akin to horror. "If she's like this now, just think how bad it's going to be when we're finally up there. When she gets her mind stuck on something..."

"Spock said something like that to me last week..."

"Yeah?" he felt the need to turn the conversation away from that topic as soon as possible, "Well, that's Uhura for you. She can convince anyone to do anything, if only by wearing them down so much that they give in to just get some relief. She probably imagines she can get me to make up with Ma before we go up, but, well, she's been trying the same thing between Spock and his dad since before I came along and not gotten anywhere with him, and I figure I'm at least as stubborn as Spock, so I can probably hold off until we launch, and she can't make me talk to her after that. 'Specially since Ma's the one who won't talk to me."

Bones turned a little towards him, the movement causing his knee to brush against Jim's briefly and soliciting a flutter in his stomach that was not at all becoming of a man of his age. "And why's that?"

"'Cause I enlisted. She wanted me to be a lawyer," he crinkled his nose at Bones, earning a bit of a laugh, "if you can imagine that. Ma was practically insistent on it. She was prepared to ship me off to Cornell that fall, nevermind I didn't want to go to New York or study law. I guess she thought it was the safest place for me or some other shit like that. So I talked her into letting me visit Sam down at Dannelly, and then Sam, like I said, helped me forge the papers to enlist."

Clearly confused, "If you were going off to college-?"

"Why would I need to forge papers?" he guessed. Sometimes he forgot that Bones was so new to Aquarian; that, unlike the others, they didn't know everything about him that was possible to learn from official dossiers, filched military records, and old interviews. It was strange, having to explain everything; nice, but strange. "I skipped a couple of grades, then graduated early when I'd taken all the classes Highland had to offer. I was barely sixteen when I joined up.

"Still, I'm not even sure if she realized I hadn't come home from visiting Sam 'til I called her after Basic." Jim shrugged, not wanting to let on it mattered, because it didn't, not any more. "She was in the Air Force too – still is, I guess, if she's at Ramstein now. She believed in the Kirk Curse, at least. Didn't want me or Sam joining up 'cause she didn't want us getting killed, which is good, I guess, even if she went about it the wrong way.

"Anyway, I called her the night before I had to be at Whiteman; told her what I'd done. She told me that I was going to die, just like Dad and Grandpa Tiberius and everyone else. And I said, yeah, but at least I'd be dying for reason, rather than living like her, too scared to do any actual living, and... well... That was the last time we talked."

The doctor frowned. "And that was ten years ago?"

"Near about, yeah. It's no big deal. It's not like we were close or anything before then."

"Still..."

"Yeah."

There was a long silence after that, filled only with the muffled noises coming out of the LVT and the occasional burst of typing from Sulu's computer. It was far from awkward, the silence, as it might've been if he'd been here with anyone else, talking about Ma and her stubborn refusal for refusing to forgive him for not being the child she wanted, but it was still silence, and that was one thing Jim had never borne well.

He glanced idly at the LVT. There was some sort of programming glitch that kept on telling them they'd gone into gimbal lock every time they tried to manoeuvre the craft, well, any direction but forward. Scotty had probably fixed it ages ago and had gone on to moving the wires around for better power distribution, or some other crazy thing like that.

Jim turned to share this thought with the doctor only to be caught off guard by Bones himself. It was nothing he could put his finger on – the tilt of his head, maybe, or the look in his eyes, which had gone golden brown in the light – but it stopped him nonetheless. For a moment. For two. And then-

And then Bones leaned over and kissed him.

It was hardly perfect, as far as kisses went. It was gentle, experimental, a little too open mouthed to be chaste; a little too tentative to be passionate. If it could be called anything, it could be called casual, more a four hundredth kiss than a first. But all that being said, it was everything that Jim had ever wanted and then some, and he returned it gladly.

And then the opening bars of _Also sprach Zarathustra_ started playing, startling him enough that he actually flung himself away from Bones (and his wonderful, amazing, unexpected, _perfect_ kiss) in shock before he realized what it was: his phone.

He'd ringtones for everyone – insipid pop songs for unrecognised numbers, _Gayane's Adagio_ for people from Aquarian, and so on – but only three people in the world had that particular ringtone and he'd not spoken to any of them since he'd been discharged, which explained his surprise at hearing it. He'd almost forgotten he'd had that song on his phone at all.

Laughing at himself, Jim dug his phone out of his pocket and started to say, "Bones, I think you might be right about watching too many SyFy movies," but, when he turned around, Bones was already disappeared.

_That_ couldn't possibly be good.

Still, he was only one man, and could only deal with one problem at a time. Resignedly, he leaned his head back on cushions once more and answered the still-ringing phone. "Kirk here."

* * *

**Sunday, 21 May, 2023** (T+ 00:48:36)

For the first time since the launch (no, even before, when they'd been strapped into their couches for hours on end, waiting for the countdown to make it to T- 0:07, when the boosters would ignite and there could be no turning back), the crew of Orion 3 had a moment to take a look out the windows.

It wasn't a long moment – in a couple of minutes they would would have to start the checklists for the first of three burns that would, eventually, take the _Constellation_ into a Sun-synchronous orbit – but it was enough.

"Well gentlemen, I do believe we made it."

Arne Darvin turned towards his CO (a move made somewhat more difficult by the fact they were still in their ACES, and Darvin's couch was on the opposite side of the shuttle from April's) and, rather dryly, commented, "Do keep up, Bobby. We crossed the Kármán Line over half hour ago."

Rolling his eyes, Jim laughed at that. "Oh, lighten up Arne. We're in space." Jim looked out at the Earth spinning below them, still not quite believing they were finally here. Every sense was telling him he'd left the planet of his birth, but he'd never felt better in his life, and Jim knew right then that, given half the choice, he'd never come back down. "We're in fucking outer space!"

Bobby started laughing then too – a bright, raucous belly laugh that, between them, filled the whole shuttle. "God, we are, aren't we?"

"We should have prepared something to say."

"To who?" he asked a little more sedately. "Only Houston's listening. We'll probably only get thirty seconds of air time on the news channels the whole mission."

"Still. Three men have left the Earth who never left the Earth before. That has to mean something."

"I never took you for a romantic Jim."

"What can I say Bobby? You learn something new every day – but that's good. Day you know everything? Might as well stop."

_(Commander April was wrong: they would a full forty-five seconds of coverage when the Constellation landed at Edwards. Fifteen of those seconds would be used to say the second manned Orion mission had been carried out with scarcely a hiccup. The rest would be used in an aside, to mention that Captain James T. Kirk, in addition to being NASA's first second-generation astronaut, had surpassed Gherman Titov's record as youngest man in space by five years and two hundred nineteen days._

_(Titov had been almost twenty-six when he'd orbited the Earth seventeen times in 1961. He'd been dead for longer than Jim had been alive. But the American public neither knew nor cared and, as such, wouldn't pay either fact any attention until he'd flown Orion 6.)_

* * *

**Tuesday, 2 January, 2029** (L-197 days)

Sulu had, apparently, seen the whole thing.

He'd also, apparently, told Uhura everything while he'd been on the phone.

"You idiot!" the woman in question shouted the moment he entered the sim looking for Pike, and probably would have followed quickly with a slap across the fact if, a) she hadn't been strapped into and couch out of reach and, b) Pike hadn't been strapped into the couch next to her. Then again, she still might've even with Pike in the room. Uhura had the infuriating tendency of making sure everyone she came into contact with knew exactly what they thought of them, be they flight engineers or four-star generals. It was refreshing after an age dealing with military politicking, but, as noted, fucking annoying in everyday situations.

Sulu was closest to the door, leaning against one the aeroponics benches, and visibly blushed at this comment. "Sorry man. When I told her, I assumed she'd go about berating you with a little more common decency."

"This is Uhura we're talking about. She has about as much subtlety as a Triple Seven. Though," he added quickly, before she could make a fuss about being compared to a jet, "in my defence, it wasn't like I asked my phone to ring right then. I'd gladly have ignored it, except for the part where it scared me half to death."

Jim wasn't going to add that, for a full millisecond, he'd expected to see a monolith in the middle of the hangar. No, he had to leave himself with some dignity and, besides, mentioning it would only make things worse. Particularly as it might earn him a psych eval now that they'd someone trained to do such things on the team, and Jim could personally guarantee that that would be the last thing Bones might want to do at the moment.

He'd taken a moment to look for Bones after he'd gotten off the phone, but he wasn't in the infirmary, or Pike's office, or anywhere else Jim had thought to look. And, if Bones was actively hiding from him, that could only mean that all Jim's worst fears about his feelings for the doctor messing up the mission were coming true.

But Bones had been the one to kiss him.

Not that that mattered in the end. Jim had still been the one to mess things up. He could have turned the phone off but, no, he'd had to leave it on, just in case someone from the office called with an update about the X-63 situation.

It was all General Barstow's fault. He knew that now.

And, okay, maybe a little bit his own, for making the theme to _2001: A Space Odyssey_ his ringtone for people he'd gone through the _Triple Six_ disaster with. Well, he'd originally programmed for all his Orion 6 team members back when they'd still been in training, but he'd added Willard's number to the list when he'd taken Clark's off. It had seemed like the thing to do, not that it had really mattered, not after Orion 10. No one from NASA called him much after that. Not Mulhall or April or Noel. Not even Gary Mitchell. And he'd used to talk to Gary all the time. Even after that nasty business with his stepsister.

Yeah. Carol was _exactly_ who he needed to be thinking about right now – if he wanted that psych eval.

"We'll discuss why you've got ringtones that scare you half to death later. Right now I want to know what you're going to do about it, 'cause the UST has gone on far enough," Uhura said, unstrapping herself from her couch and moving to stand in front of Jim, seemingly continuing to debate with herself all the while if it was worth slapping him.

"Can we not?"

Jim was fairly certain he heard Pike mumble something along the line of, "Yes, please," but couldn't sure. While it was likely Pike felt very deeply about not wanting to have to hear anything about his colleagues' (and, in many respects, children's) love lives, Pike was hardly the sort to admit it. The sort to sit there, looking more and more displeased with the situation, yes, but not the sort to tell you what he was so displeased about, at least when it came to emotions. If it had been anything else, anything else at all, he wouldn't have hesitated to say something. Jim rather liked that about him. It seemed like a very Dad-like thing to do. And, in many ways, Pike was the closest thing to a dad he'd ever known.

Jim had issues. He knew this. But that didn't change the fact that Pike thought of him as a son too.

Either way, Uhura wasn't for it. "No, because if you two don't resolve this while we're on the ground, it's only going to get worse and blow up in all our faces when we're up there. And, frankly, I'm not sure that the Moon's big enough to survive the fallout if that happens."

"Your faith in me is touching, but, really, I can handle it." Somehow. "Can I at least tell you about the phone call that fucked everything up? Yes?"

"But-"

"Good," he continued as if Uhura hadn't said anything at all (which made him feel a touch guilty until he remembered her recent slip-prophylactics-into-pockets tendencies, after which he felt decidedly less so). "Anyway, Ann called." As this, by the blank stares, meant nothing to the others, "Ann Mulhall, she was on Orion 6 with me. Left the astronaut corps right after, but stayed in the service. The Navy gave her a star and everything. She's the COMSPECWAR for Coronado now, or so she tells me-"

"It means she's in charge of the SEALS for the Pacific Fleet," Sulu explained for Uhura, who would have used the question as an excuse to start in on his incompetence with interpersonal relationships (which, while admittedly true, became a very tiring subject matter very quickly). Sulu was nearly as brilliant at relationships as Jim was bad at them, and could do things like that – explain naval acronyms for her – without being called a heartless, condescending bastard with no respect for other people, their personal boundaries, or their abilities to suss things out on their own, as Uhura had called Jim many, many times before.

In fact, when he thought about it, considering how much Uhura seemed to take unholy glee in mocking him, it was quite odd that she possessed such an extreme desire to see him happy.

But whatever. It was Uhura. She was family and he loved her. Regardless of her oddities.

"Anyway," he continued pointedly, "strange as her job is considering she's a pilot and not a SEAL, she called to tell me that NASA wants me at Arlington for the Remembrance Day ceremonies."

Pike seemed decidedly still uninterested, offering only a vague, "That's... unexpected," as he unstrapped himself from the centre couch.

"Unexpected?" Uhura laughed, momentarily distracted from his love life and the lack thereof. "It's crazy. They've all but spent the last four years calling you crazy. Why would they want you back after all this time, even if it's just to stand there looking pretty for the photographers?"

Sulu shrugged, looking almost as bored as Pike. "You know the government. It'll be five years since the Triple Six disaster this September and, rather than have a separate ceremony then, they'll have it now, when everyone's paying attention for the _Challenger_ and _Columbia_."

"What's stranger is that, according to Ann at least, they want me there badly enough they're willing to let me hang about the blockhouse at the Cape for the Orion 15 launch first, since it's only a few days before, and pretend it's just like old times..."

"They have to want something."

"Well _of course_ they want something, Uhura. The problem is with figuring out what. I think it's something to do with the X-63."

"That's ridiculous!"

"I can't think of anything else I've had a hand in recently that might've caused them to ring me up out of the blue."

"This has probably been in the works for months. I mean, it is the five year anniversary of a space-fairing catastrophe you survived. It only makes sense that they'd want you there, and that they'd have trouble getting in contact with you since you're pretty much off the grid."

"Still, it seems awful last-minute. Remembrance Day's in just over three weeks. And, 'sides, if it was really about remembering space-fairing catastrophes, why didn't they ring me up last year? I'm sure the astronaut son of a dead astronaut would have been a lovely thing to have on hand on for _Columbia's_ twenty-fifth, and twenty-five is such a much more impressive number than five."

Sulu didn't seem to find either five or twenty-five that that impressive, as all it got from him was his shrugging routine and a casual, "It's a different administration," in much the same way other people said, "These things happen," which, while true, failed to imbue him with confidence.

"Maybe. But... oh, I dunno. Things just feel _off_. Like I'm missing something. Something important. Something key about this whole situation. I mean, why have Ann of all people call me, especially when she's not assigned to NASA anymore ? Why not one of the higher ups?" The Director, for instance, or one of the Public Affairs Officers.

"Not everything is a conspiracy Jim," Pike sighed, standing and making his way towards him. He looked at the other two and, though his words were light, there was a suggestion of force behind them. "Sulu, Uhura, why don't you continue the tests, see if we've got the gimbals all sorted out?" That said, he guided Jim out of the LVT and back into the hangar.

It was empty, holding no sign of Spock, Scotty, or Chekov, let alone Bones. Not that he'd really expected any of them there – Bones was probably retreating into his work, like he'd seemed to have done after Bryan Robinson's death, and the others were probably working on the computers down in the mechanical room since they'd not been in the LVT – but, still, it would have been nice to have the distraction.

Jim flopped down on the couch for lack of any reason not to and stared at the ceiling, hard. He didn't have to see Pike's face to know there was an equal measure of exasperation and fondness there as he took his own seat, rather more sedately, on Uhura's abandoned chair.

They were both silent for a long time, and then, despite himself, Jim found himself saying, "I know it's stupid – that I'm being stupid about this whole thing – but something feels wrong about this whole situation.

"I've been watching the news lately. A real shocker, I know, but there are only so many holiday movies even I can take, and, like I said, I've had this feeling we've been missing something. I know Barstow said he wants the plans for the X-63 sped up because of the trouble in the Caucasus, but the situation there hasn't changed all that much. Not recently. Not so much that six months will make that much of a difference. And all that makes me think there's something going on there we're not being told about, but, for the life of me, I can't guess what.

"I mean, Russia's moving more troops into Chechnya and Azerbaijan, but they're still not doing anything with them besides looking threatening, like always. Turkey's stationing more troops in Georgia and along the Aras, but they're not doing anything with them either, just like always. And, well, the state-sanctioned warlords are fighting each other, like always, but_ absolutely nothing_ is going on that wasn't going on exactly like it was this time last year. There's not even a _whisper_ of anything that might be getting the State Department's panties in a twist, not in that neck of the woods at least.

"Then I started looking – I mean, really looking, on all sorts of websites that would have me on all sorts of terrorist watch lists if Uhura hadn't rigged up that whole thing with the servers that keeps the government from being able to track us in the first place. There's some whispers of unrest in Egypt, the sort of thing that the Turks would use as excuse to send in peacekeeping forces like they did in Georgia. Muslim brotherhood, and all that.

"And then I got to thinking, if the Turks do send forces into Egypt, the Russians might think to use Turkey's distraction with a second front to their advantage... and then we'd have a real war at last..." Jim sighed, every bit of exhaustion, confusion, and self-defeat that he'd been feeling since the moment he'd learned the X-63 had been moved up leaking through. "But maybe I'm just being stupid."

Pike only ever spoke in calm, measured tones, as if no word should ever be wasted, and this was no exception. "It's not stupid, Jim; it's strategy, to guess your enemy's movements before he makes them. You've always been able to see a little bit further than most. If you think that something's wrong – with NASA wanting you at their ceremony, with the AFSPC wanting the plans early, - I believe you've got reason to. But you've got to remember something."

"What?" Jim asked resignedly, rolling onto his side, looking at Pike but not quite meeting his eyes.

There was something resolute about Pike, an undeniable efficacy and genuineness about his person that made Jim think of the Kennedys, if the Kennedys had been desert rats and not New Englanders. Perhaps the colonel was a touch more martial than that family had ever seemed, and certainly without the near-royal family background, but that selfsame confidence, that charisma was still there. No one less could have convinced a sixteen-year-old Jim to do something about his dream of wanting to do something better. Something special.

There had been times, in the years between the gas station in Chicago where he'd first met Pike and the bar in East Cambridge he'd met him again six years later, when he'd wondered why Colonel Christopher Pike had spoken to him at all that day. It wasn't until he joined Aquarian that he'd come understand that Pike spoke to everyone the same way, with an eye for finding what would motivate a person within minutes of meeting them. Whether this was a natural or learned trait Jim could not say, but it was such an integral part of the colonel that he scarcely questioned it, though sometimes he did question what Pike would have become had Trip not asked him to do this Moon mission for him – he could easily imagine him as a senator or a VP for a firm like Durandal. Someone world-changing, anyway.

He didn't ask a lot of things about Pike. He didn't need to, not when it was more than obvious that, whatever lay in his past, Pike was someone he'd willingly follow to the end of the world.

If the world was perfect, it would let Jim become a commander even half as good as Pike was at his worst. No, that was wrong: if the world was perfect, it would mean that Jim would never need to command another mission. Not that he hadn't loved every minute of Orion 10, but Pike was so much better at it than he'd ever been. Because Jim knew he wasn't a Kennedy or a Roosevelt, or, hell, even a Robertson. Ten years had passed, but he was still that same fucked up kid, and a handful of undeserved medals and three trips into space hadn't changed that.

"Not to go burdening yourself unnecessarily with things you can't help."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"The situation in the Caucasus isn't yours to worry about."

"It has to be somebody's." A real, true war between Turkey and Russia would force the X-63 project ahead faster than Aquarian had prepared for. And while that wouldn't create too many problems for Enterprise's launch, it would be a problem for all the unmanned supply launches that would follow, allowing them to expand their base and become truly self-sustaining.

"Why yours?"

"Who's then?" Pike's, in non-existent hours he wasn't trying to pull everything together for the mission and dealing with Aquarian's real life façade? Spock's? _Scotty's_? No, it was Jim's responsibility, whatever else Pike said. It was partially his fault mankind was forced to go about getting to the Moon this way anyway. He could handle the consequences.

Jim was very good with consequences.

"And you don't see that as an unnecessary burden?"

Of course it was a burden. But, "Not unnecessary." The mission was all that mattered. If the cost of success was his own happiness, well, it wouldn't be the first time in history that a Kirk had sacrificed himself for the greater good.

Pike sighed and ran a hand through his hair. For a moment it looked like he might say something more, but he didn't, and silence returned to the hangar.

* * *

When it became clear that Scotty had decided the best way to fix problem with the gimbals was to sit down with Spock and Chekov and rewrite the program that translated the LVT's movements to the simulator's star chart, Jim went looking for Bones. They needed to talk.

There were, however, a few problems with this plan, first among them that Jim had not the slightest idea what he would say to the doctor when he found him. After all, what could he say? _I'm sorry, but while I think I might be in love with you, nothing can ever come of it?_ He didn't need Uhura to tell him that that that would be a terrible idea.

It was true, though. The mission was paramount. He could phrase it whatever way he wanted – concern that Bones was merely turning to him because he was the first person to show interest since his wife divorced him; worry that any relationship between them would be unduly stressed their already stressful mission; fear that their attraction was formed solely out of the stress of the situation – but what it all came back to in the end was that something between them could affect the mission, and Jim couldn't have that. It was stupid and pathetic and more than a little cruel, but that was the deal.

Either way, it was probably for the better that he didn't find Bones lurking about. It gave him time to crash on a chair in the infirmary and think of a better way to handle the problem.

By midnight, Jim had decided three things:

One, that the chairs in the infirmary sucked, no matter how you went about sitting in them, and should be replaced post haste, preferably with ones exactly like Pike's.

Two, that he would very much like to kiss Bones (amongst other things) again, preferably without interruption or audience the second time round.

And three, that the chance to walk on the Moon was well worth the cost of everything else.

Armed with this knowledge, Jim went looking for Bones again.

* * *

He found Bones in the motel room they shared, buried underneath a mountain of blankets to keep from freezing in the bitter Iowa winter. It was hard at first to tell if he was still awake or asleep, but, either way, the doctor stirred as he entered the room, probably roused by the blast of snowy air that accompanied him. The TV was on, as was the bathroom light, though that meant nothing; the TV was usually on in their room, though usually Jim was the one watching it.

A beat or two passed in which the only sound came faintly from the television:

_"Ha... there it is again. That itch. Go down, go down, go down, go down, go down."_

_"The urge to jump. Do you know where it comes from, that sensation? Genetic heritage. Ever since we were primates in the trees. It's our body's way of testing us. Calculating whether or not we can reach the next branch."_

_"No, that's not it... that's too kind. It's not the urge to jump, it's deeper than that. It's the urge to fall!"_

And then, as if nothing at all had changed, the doctor's voice floated up from the bed, heavy with sleep. "Jim," he said, "turn the TV off and go to bed."

Despite himself, Jim smiled indulgently, reminding him, "You're the one who left it on this time," even as he did as asked. He toed out of his shoes as he went and pulled off his jacket too, intending to dive into his own bed. If Bones didn't want to talk about their aborted kiss, well, it was all for the better. They could just pretend it never happened...

...which was what he'd been going to suggest anyway, so everything worked out perfectly. And eventually Uhura would realize this and stop trying to play matchmaker. And eventually these feelings of love and lust (tinged right now with more than a little hurt) would dissipate, and it would be as if the kiss had never had happened at all.

...which was exactly what he wanted, because feelings complicated things, and in twenty-eight weeks they'd be on the Moon, where the last things they needed were complications.

...which they inevitably would have, because even the smoothest of relationships created complications, and Jim had never exactly been known for his smooth relationships. Nevermind the fact that Spock and Uhura seemed to have a less-than-perfectly-healthy relationship that no one was complaining might cause unnecessary complications for the mission.

…which was okay, it really was, because Bones had only kissed him because Jim was the first person who'd shown interest in him since his divorce. It had probably meant nothing to the doctor, and he'd probably have run off even if his phone _hadn't_ rung. He probably wanted to pretend nothing had happened even more than Jim did.

...which was okay, it really was, because Jim was fine just as he was. He'd be better if he was in space, but, as far as present circumstances allowed, he was perfectly fine.

Really, he was.

"I was waiting up for you, you idiot. That makes it your fault and your TV to turn off."

Jim's smile wavered. "Were you?" he said brightly, as if he'd no clue at all why Bones might want to talk to him so late. He was well-practised in pretending nothing was wrong, but he would have been lying to say that it didn't hurt to have to use this tone on Bones, who'd never offered him anything but the complete truth. It mad him feel hollow, cold, and more than more than a little foolish. It was foolish to feel that way. He'd already made his choice; he'd made it long ago, when he'd first looked up at the sky and seen it as the last, greatest frontier man would ever find. He'd come too far to risk it all.

The words of his excuse already on his lips, "Look-" Bones began, struggling to untangle himself from his blankets enough to sit up.

And this word – this one single, pathetic word – caused something in his to break, his resolve shattering into a million pieces as he found himself saying, far too quickly and far too desperately for the kind of man he liked to think of himself as, "I'm sorry my phone rang and I'm sorry I reacted like I did and I'm sorry I didn't come looking for you sooner and I know I'm a terrible person and that there's no way in hell I deserve a second chance, but, please, Bones. Just, please."

He didn't know what he was asking or why he was asking it now when he'd spent all day convincing himself he'd no need for it, only that he was, because as unbearable as the idea of the mission failing was, the idea of never knowing if this thing between him and Bones would work was worse. It could very well cause everything to go up into the biggest ball of fire since the last sun in these parts exploded, but he had to take that one in ten thousand chance. Bones was worth the risk.

"Jim?" He was clearly confused, either from Jim's unexpected change of heart or sleep, but something flashed in Bones' eyes; a flicker of the same something that had been there before he'd kissed him earlier.

That was all the leave Jim needed before he kissed him again.

* * *

a/n: Well, one, is this long or what? And, two, sry this took so long, but while the first 3k came easy, the rest fault me ever step of the way for the perfect wording/phrasing. But forgive me, first stime writing anything vaguely slashy (though "The Dare" will get there one day, I promise) so I guess there's some, er, writing anxiety to be expected. Or something.

Two, where to start? From Orion 3 - Arne Darvin, the mission specialist, was the Augment-Klingon from "The Trouble With Tribbles;" mission commander Robert "Bobby" April was the first captain of the _Enterprise_ in TOS and, I believe, only ever mentioned by name. And, yes, the Carol briefly mentioned will be Carol Marcus. And, yes, I've made her Gary's stepsister. Jim's 2nd great-grandfather, Nathan Kirk, was based off the real life British flying Ace Edward Mannock; his great-grandfather, Samuel, was based off of real life Austrialian RAF pilot Patterson Huges (it was real hard to find Americans who'd died at about the right time); his grandfather, Tiberius, was based off of pilot Dennis Traynor, who acutually survied that crash (it's aniversary was just last sunday); his dad, again, was based off of Richard Husband, commander of the _Columbia_'s last mission.

Three, yes, both _Also Spake Zathusura_ and _Gayane's Adagio_ appear in _2001_. So I'm a SyFy nerd. If you can guess where this week's "movie" quote comes from, so are you. If you can catch the other reference made to that episode in here, well, there will be cookies.

Four, the Karman Line is the offican earth-space boundary and is 100 miles above sea level. A Sun-syncronous orbit is one in which the object orbiting passes over the equator at the exact same relative local time each time. Ie, if the object passes over Uganda at noon local time, when it passes over Ecuador, it will be noon local time there. In the case of Orion 3, it orbited the Earth very slowly - once every two hours - and at each time it was 15:00 local time. Titov died in 2000.

Five, technically the aniversary of Apollo 1 (Jan 28) is called the Day of Remembrance, but that sounded pretentious, so it's just Remembrance Day here.

Six, the whole Caucaus thing, again, comes from _The Next 100 Years_, detailed and polished by moi, but still.

Seven, Pike in the movie struck me as very JFK, and this fic reflects that or, at least, is meant to.

And, as always, questions comments concerns queries et al are welcome. I'm working on putting all my gratitous author's notes on my lj, the link to which is on my profile page, but, if I've forgotten something... well, I don't mind answering.


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